A Circle Never Ends
by eso terik
Summary: the ghosts, the island, the five. these things never change, because time is a circle, and a circle never ends. when you reach its end, it's only a new beginning. but maybe this circle is more like a spring. a spring a thousand miles long, but still one that eventually reaches an end. the only problem is, to reach that end, you have to go all the way to the very bottom.
1. Chapter 1

The ghosts had done a lot of exceptionally cruel shit since Alex had started playing this game, eight-or-so hours ago. They'd showed her death: emaciated corpses and shattered cadavers and bloated bodies from the bottom of the ocean, all images playing in the cinema of her unconscious mind, but, by the time she woke up under Harden Tower, she'd gotten used to that. So they upped it a notch. They started fucking with the people she knew; taking turns talking through Clarissa, Jonas, Ren. When trying to shove the square peg of 97 voices through the round hole of one mouth didn't work, they changed their tactics again. This time, they showed her the deaths of her friends. Ren's broken body on the rocks of the Towhee Woods, the utter lack of light behind Clarissa's eyes as they hurled her off of each and every available ledge (the ghosts _really_ seemed to like _that_ trick). But even when they'd dangled all that death in front of Alex's face, all the pain of the people she cared most about, she hadn't broken. So they'd found a trash can for her, a little dark corner of the universe where they could lock her up and not have to worry about her until she went feral and started clawing at the walls to take their offer.

This was, Alex knew, probably not the first time she'd been here, on the other side of the Source. The spacetime continuum appeared to be a broken record around Edwards Island, and she highly doubted that _anything_ she did would be a truly original move. It was kind of weird to notice, at first, but even outside of what she could officially declare a time loop, there was an air of deja vu about her actions. Now that this deja vu had evolved, past the point of inexplicable familiarity with events she'd never done before into full-blown "saying sentences Jonas had said a thousand times before he'd say it for the first time", there wasn't even really a point in arguing that she'd never done any of this before. And this part of the void isn't _too_ unfamiliar.

"You're not somewhere I go _every time_ ," Alex murmured aloud, "but I know I've been here before." Addressing the void was strange, but hey, it's not like anyone was around to question what she'd just done. For the first time tonight, Alex was completely, utterly alone. She appreciated it. Ever since Michael had died, she'd taken up a habit of introspection; before she took an action, she'd meditate on what its outcome would be, and it wasn't abnormal to take nearly an hour alone in her room thinking about what she'd done throughout the day, how she'd handle the situations she was in better the next time around, and the like. On the island, there wasn't exactly time for that practice.

Seeing as no one was around to question it, she pondered on the questions of the day aloud. "What do they-" she caught herself: it was likely that the ghosts were actually watching her here, even if from far away. "What do _you_ ," she corrected, "want with my friends? Why not me? Why not... why not Nona?" Alex placed her hand on her chin, sitting down. "Yeah, come to think of it, Nona hasn't been caught up in any of this shit, has she? Like, obviously you _have_ fucked with her, to some extent. The thing with Ren, and her grandpa, and whatnot, but she's getting special treatment. She hasn't been possessed even once, has she?" The void did not respond. Alex pursued this line of thought a while longer. What did she and Nona have in common? They were both... female, presumably? But that didn't check out, just look at Clarissa, the ghosts are even more infatuated with her than anyone else.

The problem, Alex decided, with this question was that she really has no idea who Nona is. Or what the ghosts are/want. Well, they _want_ to steal the bodies of healthy teens and live out real lives, which is understandable, but at the same time not something she's really going to accommodate. Especially when those teens are Alex's best/only friends and the ghosts' method is closer to terrorism than a lively negotiation.

Based on Maggie Adler's notes, the ghosts have regressed back into childhood. Considering their general disregard for human life, the game of hangman, and the way they'd pushed Maggie to put the notes over the island like a scavenger hunt, it seems logical that this is all a game to them. Especially if Alex's theory about time looping around the whole night is right, there's no consequences to doing anything wrong for them. They know what they want, they think they have a way to get it, and they'll do whatever they have to do, however many times they have to do it. Which is why this is so confusing to her. If the night's a cycle and the ghosts are aware of it, then to get new bodies and live a life can't be their only goal. If it was, they would definitely have found out how to do it by now, right?

"Hell," she breathed. "I kind of wish I'd taken that smoke right about now. Standing here doing nothing isn't getting me anything. Maybe I can find a way out of here."

She took the radio from her pocket and fiddled with it. Somewhere in the 120 range, the radio shook with the telltale interference of the ghosts. She was getting somewhere with this. After a moment, the vibrations stopped, and the speaker just played static again. Upping it a little bit, the same event occurred at 124.3. This time, though, the radio didn't stop. The tremors got more and more violent, the speakers started screaming, and the radio floated out of her grasp. Alex leaped for it, but she was too late. The device exploded, just like a balloon. The pieces dropped to the ground, and Alex did with them.

"No..." she whispered. "No... no, no no." Her voice grew a bit louder with each word, a little more desperate. "No. No, no, no, no! No! _No!_ " She crawled rapidly toward the pieces, trying against all logic to put them back together, as she had back as a kid, when the ocean had wrecked all her sand castles at the beach. It didn't work. All that happened from her scooping motions and jigsaw emulation was that the scattered scraps of charred metal were now a _pile_ of scraps of charred metal. The reality of her situation hit her in an instant. She stood up, ramrod straight, pacing. The pacing didn't help, but it did give her legs something to do while her brain freaked the hell out about the fact that she was now _stuck_ in an _alternate reality_ with the ghosts that that alternate reality had driven _insane_. Alex didn't even really notice that she'd started crying until the tears hit her hands.

"Now... you... see..." they chimed, suddenly all around her. The voices of the sunken cried out. "This is our pain. This... is why we play."

Alex turned to find the source of the voice, but, when she noticed that the red eyes were all around her. "Why?" she shouted, her voice cracking under the pressure of her tears. "Why us? What do you want from us?"

"Silly girl," the voices menaced. "Leave... is... possible. We... will... leave. You... are our ves-sel."

The ghosts parted to make way for their favorite puppet, and Clarissa walked through the opening of the circle. The blackness of the void was suddenly replaced by a bluish-greenish light, and the scene of the USS Kanaloa played out overhead. A collision, a terrible wrenching noise, and a flash of light. Alex shielded her eyes, just like she'd been taught by her nuke-paranoid dad, as if that would really make a difference when the blast was close enough to rip your skin off, or separate your soul from your body. "So you can finally see it in all its glory," the ghosts said with Clarissa's voice. "It really is a glorious sight to behold."

"Why do you want me to see it so badly? This isn't the first time we've done this, I know that much."

"Ah, so she learns," the ghosts snickered menacingly.

Evidently, the ghosts in Clarissa's mouth had more tact, as they hushed the others. "This isn't the first time you've been here, no, but it _is_ the first time you've gotten this far. Usually you tap out by this point, but hey, you don't have the radio anymore, so we guess that's not an option. You have to see this, you know. All of time is a cycle, this cycle is just coming back around."

"I... I don't understand," Alex said.

"It's okay. We don't expect you to, yet. You won't remember this in a few hours. It's hard to understand when you can't remember."

"Why would I forget this? I could never forget anything like this!"

"But you have, and you do, and you will. Do you remember the last time we talked here," Clarissa asked.

"No," Alex admitted. "Not exactly, but I remember that I've been in this place before!"

"That's better than we expected. Walk with me," Clarissa urged. Alex complied, and the edge that the ghosts had put in Clarissa's voice died off a bit. "Everything is a cycle. We've seen the universe's birth, life, and death one million times over. Humans are the same way. _You_ are the same way."

"What do you mean," Alex asked. Clarissa gestured to the sky, and the darkness parted to make way for a scene to play out overhead. This time, it was not the explosion of the USS Kanaloa, but a different, much larger explosion. "What is it," Alex asked.

"Hush," Clarissa said, although it wasn't malicious, like Alex was so used to. "You'll see," she assured. Alex watched in silence, sitting down where the ground would be, if this weren't a void, and leaning back on her arms to more comfortably watch the scene play out. The explosion ceased after a long moment, although the heat left the particles glowing enough that it was easy to see rapid movement, and eventual condensation into clouds of dust. Alex realized after pockets of light started to form in the gas that she was watching the birth of the universe.

"I appreciate you speeding time up like this," the teal-haired girl commented.

"Of course," Clarissa purred. "We don't have time for you to watch it all like we did."

As the formation of stars and galaxies, as well as the ever-expanding pockets of darkness between them, continued, Alex asked incredulously, "You watched the lifespan of the universe in real time? But... you've only been out - well, dead, I guess - for, like, sixty or seventy years! How is that even possible?"

"Time... is... illusion," the ghosts responded, not bothering to talk through Clarissa this time. "Does not... work. In the void."

"This is the important part, so shut up," Clarissa said. The ghosts were happy enough to comply, so so was Alex. Above, the lively hues of all of creation began to mellow, from a bright blue to a soft yellow, to eventually just a dim red. And then, suddenly, one of the galaxies in the middle of the universe petered out of existence. The darkness that was left in its place began to spread like a hungry plague, mostly following a path away from the first galaxy to die off, but also popping up in smaller pockets in the further-out edges of the universe. As a general rule, the far rim stayed alive the longest, but even it eventually fell victim to the great darkness. After the last star had died, Alex, Clarissa, and the ghosts sat together in silence. "That's it for everything you can ever comprehend existing," Clarissa said lightly.

"Seriously? I always imagined it'd be, like, cooler," Alex admitted.

This seemed to anger the ghosts inhabiting the older girl. "Cooler? You just watched everything that ever lived die in front of your eyes, the hospitable universe be replaced by a cold, dark, uninhabitable wasteland, leaving every civilization to ever possibly exist floating in emptiness until they eventually starved, and your critique is that it's not _cool_ enough?"

"Well," Alex responded, a little testily, "I suppose that's _one_ way of putting it, sure. I just expected that the death of the universe would be more, like... climactic, you know? God, I feel dumb admitting this, and I swear to god that if Clarissa can actually hear this and give me shit about it later, I will hunt you down and end you, no matter what happens here, but... I kind of expected some giant showdown. The forces of good and evil, or whatever, god, satan, you know? That kind of thing. Something to give the whole mess that is life a purpose."

"It doesn't really matter if she can hear this," the ghosts said through Clarissa. "She'll never have the time to give you shit. Or, at least, _you_ won't be there. Even if she does remember this, and even if there is an after to this night for the people who take part in it - we're not sure, by the way - you won't be there. We've dealt with your soul a great many times. We can tell that you are always the same you."

"Well, that sure is depressing."

"Do you want to know how we know?"

"Not really, but do I have a choice?"

"Ha, no."

The rest of the ghosts began to chime in to tell this story. Alex decided they had an odd, seemingly random sense of timing. "Adler... Maggie. You are so like her. Time... cycles. Regret. We can... smell... it on you... like a badge you try to hide. We are... familiar."

"Yes," Clarissa followed up. "We know regret well, and we know each individual's type of regret. No two souls regret quite the same. So we know it's still you, and not anyone else. But your regret is so familiar. Margaret regretted nearly the same way. How fitting, that the Adler dies and the Alex rises to replace her. Come to think of it, we sense another Anna, too."

"Anna? Anna Shea? Maggie's friend? Who got caught in the void with you," Alex asked.

"First of all, Anna was certainly a lot more than just Maggie's friend. Poor girls, they lived a couple of decades too early. Anna's still out there, somewhere in the darkness. She hasn't moved on yet. But yes, the other girl is Anna's parallel. It's not quite as strong as your closeness to Margaret, but it's definitely noticeable," Clarissa said.

"So... I'm like Maggie, and Nona's like Anna? And Maggie and Anna were in love, or something like that?"

The ghosts laughed, both the ones inside of Clarissa and the ones outside. It was dry, more a scoff than a real laugh. "Are certain feelings starting to make sense now?" Alex blushed. "Ah, so her hair is blue, but her face goes scarlet. Someone should write that into a poem. A shame it'll never happen though." Alex rolled her eyes, acting as if she was still there, but her mind was elsewhere, and the laughing sure as hell wasn't helping her think. She pulled her legs into her chest, threw her arms around them, and put her head deep into the crevice it'd created.

Suddenly, the darkness was gone, and the ghosts were too. Or, at least, pushed (a bit clumsily) to the side for the time being. Alex was back in the Adler house, although she knew it was really just a facsimile of the real thing. She sat in Maggie's old chair in the living room, and was a bit surprised when Clarissa pushed through the door with two teacups and a kettle.

"Relax, Alex, I'm real," Clarissa assured before Alex could even ask the question. "We've got a bit of time here. I'd offer you a smoke, but the ghosts got rid of them. Told me it was bad for me. A weird, selective sort of conscience, they are." She set down each of the cups, placing a teabag in both, and poured some of the steaming water. Her actions were a little hurried, as if there was a time constraint, but not too much. She picked her cup up and sipped tentatively at it, gesturing for Alex to do the same.

"Damn," Alex muttered. "This is really good. Since when were you a tea connoisseur?"

"Me? Never. Henry Griffin loved the stuff, though, so I guess this little house that I carved out of the void got that stamp on it. Fine by me, I don't mind the stuff when it's like this." The two sat in silence for a moment, and Clarissa was not the first to break it.

"So... sorry about getting you possessed."

Clarissa shrugged. "It's annoying, and I'll fight you over it if we ever get out of here, but right now there's not a whole lot that getting pissed does, constructively speaking." She took another sip from her tea. "And, I know, I know, 'since when did you need a constructive reason to get pissed, 'rissa?'. I know it's fucked up and all, but being pissy toward you... helped... after Michael died. And although I always knew it wasn't your fault, it was just kind of something I did. And I'm sorry about that."

"Hey," Alex said. "You never flat-out said it was my fault, which I appreciate. And... it's okay. When Mike died, it all kind of fell apart, you know? And we all did some crazy shit to try to get over it. My dad full-on deserted to try and escape the memory, my mom decided to marry some guy after her first interaction with him was getting mistaken as a friggin' Disneyland employee, or whatever Jonas said the story was, and I wasn't exactly fair to you, either." The two sat in silence for a long moment, neither really sure where to go from there. Alex decided to change the subject altogether, as, despite the re-conciliatory nature of the conversation, Mike was still a touchy topic that neither of them really wanted to broach. "You said that that guy who possessed you, Henry, or whatever his name was, imprinted his tea on you, or whatever, right? Can you tell me anything more about them? What they remember? What this all is?"

Clarissa sighed. "Only a little. This is all definitely a loop, and you never have managed to escape it. You might be able to eventually, but you haven't yet. And I also remember... so. You and Nona, huh?" Alex spat out her tea a little bit. Before she could respond, the redhead laughed. "Deny it if you want. It's fair to say that the ghosts might be wrong about it. Despite what they'd have you believe, they're far from omniscient. They're just _aware_ of how many times, exactly, they've done this, and how you're predisposed to react, so they read you like a book. Ah, I'm getting sidetracked, though. If we-" she took another sip of her tea. "If _you_ ever get out of here, with or without _me_ , just know that you've got my official, one-hundred-percent blessing with Nona."

Alex avoided answering Clarissa's point, redirecting the conversation. "Why are you telling me this? How did you even get away from them? The ghosts, I mean."

Clarissa racked her brain for a long moment before tentatively responding. "I'm telling you this because... hm. Because the ghosts left the memory of this night a thousand times on me, and I know, because they know, that you never really remember this. But there's another one, another ghost, tonight, as opposed to all the other times, and it's, like... helping? I think? It wants you to get out of here. And I think, because this new ghost thinks, that _this_ time is different from all the other times, and that maybe you'll remember _this_ time _next_ time." Alex was going to protest that that made absolutely no sense whatsoever, but Clarissa pushed up her sleeve to check her watch. "Ah!"

"What?"

"It's time for you to go. I won't remember this, but I sure hope that you do."

* * *

"It used to be a military base."


	2. Chapter 2

"Ren," Clarissa shouted.

"Uh huh..." he replied nonchalantly.

"C'mon, fess up. You wanna go out with Nona, right?"

"Clarissa," the girl in question objected.

"Wait wait wait. I wanna hear his answer."

Alex was comfortable with this line of conversation. This was familiar; this happened every time. She was used to it.

It was nothing more than a freak accident, really, that set her off of that comfortable track. It just so happened that, as the teal-haired girl's eyes bounced from Clarissa to Ren to Nona, and back again, she lingered for just a moment too long on Nona, seeing something she probably wasn't meant to. Ever so subtly, even subconsciously, the Chinese-American had shot a glance in Alex's direction after she'd protested Clarissa's cruel and unusual punishment of Ren. Did the look mean anything? Probably not, Alex's rational mind told her, but her _rational_ mind wasn't in charge anymore. She suddenly tasted tea, and remembered something about being given some sort of blessing. She blushed involuntarily, breaking the eye contact that the two had held for an instant, and that was just enough for the love of Michael's life to catch.

"Ooh, nevermind, Ren, I don't care about you. I'm changing my question. Alex-" she waited patiently for Alex to look up.

"What," the teal-haired girl sighed.

" _You_ got awfully timid when I brought up having crushes on Nona. Got anything to share?"

Alex rolled her eyes and suppressed a groan, but was grateful that Clarissa had at least not phrased it in the form of a valid question. Before she could snap that she did not, in fact, have anything to share and hit Clarissa with a painful question, Jonas opened his mouth. "I'm not entirely sure that I understand the rules correctly, but..." he intoned, "I'm pretty sure that that doesn't _force_ Alex to answer the question you want her to." Holy _shit_ , Alex was going to kill that kid.

"You know," Clarissa said, "I think I'm beginning to like you, Jonas. I really do. Alex: have you got a crush on Nona? Spill it, kiddo."

"No," Alex hissed, rolling her eyes once more. Stepbrother or not, Jonas was _not_ getting off this island without at _least_ a severe wound.

"Bullshit," Clarissa said right back. "Why are you blushing then?"

"I don't know," Alex shouted back, perhaps a little too fast. "I literally don't even know. For some reason I just got weird deja vu, and I remembered something that made me feel really, like, embarrassed, and now you're grilling me on my weird, inexplicable random thoughts for absolutely no reason. So there, are you happy now?" Alex sat down on the sand, feeling Nona's gaze boring into the side of her head. It didn't matter, she was _not_ going to make eye contact with her right now. "Ren, take the next question. I don't really feel like asking anyone anything right now."

Alex occupied herself with stoking the fire for the next fifteen minutes or so, and the rest of the group left her out of the conversation for a while. She got caught up in her own thoughts, peaceful for now, but was ripped out of her introspective stupor when she heard her name. "- Alex," Nona had said softly. The girl in the red jacket shook her head clear.

"What," Alex asked.

"What do you mean, 'what'," Clarissa responded.

"Sorry, I was pretty zoned out. Heard my name, though. What's up?"

"Oh," Jonas explained casually, sipping on a cup full of some unnamed but assuredly alcoholic substance. "We're still playing the slap game, or whatever. Clarissa asked Nona to do a 'fuck, marry, kill'."

"You were Nona's choice to marry," Clarissa added.

"Well, I certainly do feel honored," Alex muttered, careful to angle her face in such a way that the fire blocked Clarissa's ability to make eye contact with her.

Luckily, Ren came to the rescue. "Let's inaugurate this bitch by checking out the caves. Nona, wanna come?"

"Uh, I mean, I would, but..." Nona began.

"I'm very clingy, Ren," Clarissa said smoothly. Ren shrugged and beckoned Jonas to help him get over the fence.

"Hey, uh, Alex," Nona muttered. "Can we... can we talk? For a minute? Like, in private?"

"If Clarissa's not too clingy for it," Alex responded slyly.

"I'll allow it," the older girl responded.

"Hey, Alex," Jonas called from across the beach. "You planning on coming with?"

Nona looked over toward him, then back to Alex, who was currently looking in his direction. She wrung her hands together for a moment before losing her nerve. "Actually," she muttered, "you should probably just go. I'd hate to be the reason you miss out on something cool."

Alex snapped her head back to Nona, a lightly quizzical look on her face. "What do you mean," the teal-haired girl asked, standing up and dusting the sand off the seat of her pants. "You had something to say, important enough to need privacy. What was it?"

"It's... it's really nothing. Nothing important. I'd hate to make your friends wait up for you," she quickly responded. "It's fine, we can talk about it later. Or we can not."

"Bull-shiiiit," Clarissa sang softly. Nona's back tensed. The younger girl loved Clarissa, but _god_ she hated her sometimes.

"It's fine," Alex assured. "Ren'll get over it. Or he won't. I mean, if he's willing to ruin our entire fifteen years of friendship over a single talk on the beach that takes probably less than five minutes in total, then I guess that'll be a bridge I'll cross when I get to it."

"For real, Alex, you should just go," Nona urged quietly. She didn't really want her to go, but at the same time was a little - more than a little - scared to have this conversation.

Alex turned toward Jonas and Ren, cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted at them, "Don't wait up for me. I'll catch up, I'm just going to have a quick chat with Nona." Ren flashed a casual thumbs-up before getting a boost over the fence at the entrance to the caves. Jonas followed him over just a second later. Alex swiveled back toward Nona, flashing a small and slightly triumphant smile. "My schedule's all clear," she said. "Lead the way." Nona turned away from the cave and walked slowly. Alex jogged for a moment before slowing next to the girl, so that the two were walking in sync. "So what's up," she said in a slightly hushed tone. Nona not-so-discreetly looked over her shoulder, and when she judged that Clarissa was still in earshot, shook her head no. Alex took that to mean that they needed to get a little further away, so walked in silence until the two were on the other side of the large rock from which Alex had spent a few minutes throwing several smaller rocks into the ocean.

"So," Nona began hesitantly, "back during truth-or-slap, um, I'm sorry about how Clarissa was acting. Like, about those weird, probe-y questions and stuff. She does stuff like that, like, all the time..."

"Yeah, it's fine," Alex responded with a slight sigh. "It's not like I was blaming you for her being supremely annoying, or anything."

"Yeah, I know, it's just that she gets that way about me. She's like, super protective, and is always, like, trying to vet out people that she thinks could end up trying to ask me out, that she thinks I might be cute with, or whatever."

Alex laughed. "You think she thinks you and I would be cute, then?"

Nona blushed a bright red, quickly finding her boots very interesting. She wrung her hands together below her waist, avoiding eye contact. "Um... I... well... I don't know. She... like... does weird things... sometimes, I guess... I don't know..."

"Hey," Alex assured, reaching out and grabbing Nona's shoulder comfortingly. Nona tensed up, holding her breath for a second before realizing what she was doing and quickly letting it out. The Chinese-American girl's shoulders slumped a bit. Reassuringly, Alex continued, "It's all okay. Tonight'll be a fun time for everyone, and if you want to go get smashed and check out some weird rocks with me, that'd be totally cool. And then maybe after we could hang out sometime, too. Clarissa's pestering doesn't mean anything."

Nona looked back up. "Are- are you sure? That'd be cool, yeah. To be honest, after how tense that game of truth-or-slap was, being sober is, like, my single least favorite thing."

Alex flashed a toothy grin, happy to have repaired the situation. However, that wasn't allowed to be how things went, and her next line was very obviously a bad idea as soon as it was out of her mouth. "Besides, I'd have picked you to marry, too." Nona stared at Alex wide-eyed, her lips pursing and her hands back together, ringing again. _Shit_ , why had she said that? "Um, I... I mean..." Alex gulped. "Oh, Jesus," she sighed, "I don't know what I mean."

After a long moment of awkward silence, Nona laughed a bit. It was a soft sound. Very quiet, but good to hear nonetheless. Alex's chest did a weird tightening thing. "Let's just get trashed and see where this night goes, okay?"

"Okay," Alex breathed, still in awe of how absolutely stupid she'd been.

"But first, you were supposed to go and, like, do something in the caves, with the radio, right?"

"Yeah."

"You should go and do that."

"Yeah."

Alex turned around to go, when Nona called, "Wait!" Alex whipped back around, and Nona was shockingly close, just a few inches away from her face. Instinctively, she started to back up, but before she could get away, Nona grabbed her hand and pecked her on the lips lightly. Alex went ramrod straight, her mind temporarily leaving her body on autopilot. Had that _really_ just happened? Nona, kissing her? And had she just... _liked it_? Why had Nona decided that _that_ line, of all things, was going to be the thing that made her do that? Most importantly, what was she going to do now? Certainly not pretend like that, probably the highlight of her night - and month, if she's being honest - hadn't happened.

"Alex? Earth to Alex?" The teal-haired girl was knocked out of her stupor. "Was that... was that alright? I wasn't, like, overstepping my boundaries, or anything, right," Nona asked, her voice very small.

"I..." Alex began, before realizing that she literally didn't have the words to finish that sentence. She gulped back her nerves, and pushed a lock of hair out of her face. "No. No, that was... that was great. And I would love to do it again, but, like, people... waiting on us..."

"Okay, thank god that I didn't just like assault you or whatever. But, yeah, people waiting. On _you_ , more specifically. You should, like, go and check out those caves, or whatever. And when you get back, we can maybe try to find a way to slip off after Clarissa and the rest of them get too trashed. To talk, or something, you know? Just don't mention this to anyone else."

"Yeah, sure," Alex responded. She realized her left hand was still in Nona's from when she'd first grabbed it. She pulled it away reluctantly, giving Nona a shy smile, before walking back across the beach, trying to find a way to avoid Clarissa's penetrating stare. Despite the way her heart was fluttering, she had an ominous, foreboding feeling about the way the rest of the night would play out.

* * *

It turned out that that ominous feeling had been accurate, and, just like always, the ghosts were loose on the island. Alex's inexplicable premonitions, like the one she'd had back on the beach, with Nona, came at a more and more frequent pace now. However, she was keeping her mind busy with other things, namely Nona's absence.

"So," Jonas began casually, "care to tell me what Nona had to say before we got this whole night sent all to hell?"

"No," Alex said, just a little too quickly and a little too firmly.

"Oh?" Jonas cocked an eyebrow and smiled wanly. "So you mean to say that you _don't_ want to talk about Nona, correct?"

"Bingo," Alex said, eager to let the conversation die. Internally, though, she sighed, as she remembered that Jonas could always read her like an open book. Which, weird, wasn't something she should know about the kid she'd met earlier today.

"Bullshit," Jonas laughed. "She was literally the first person you mentioned after you woke up at the radio tower. Every time you mention the others, you know, the people we have to save, Nona's always the first name to come up. I'm no psychologist, but I think that that's usually a sign of some sort of subconscious thought process that needs to be unearthed."

"I have no idea what you mean," Alex replied innocently.

"You've also been whispering her name every few minutes."

"Shit, that was out loud?"

"Has anyone ever told you that you really need to avoid verbalizing your thoughts?" Alex glared at him. He responded with a laugh. "So. Care to tell me what Nona had to say before this whole night got all sent to hell," he repeated.

Annoying, Alex decided. He was annoying. That was, like, the single most annoying and embarrassing way he could've done that. "It was," Alex started. She sighed. "It was nothing, really. She just, like, apologized to me for how awkward Clarissa was being during truth-or-slap. That's all. It was nice, but she didn't have to do it."

"Mhm," Jonas said, clearly not believing. "Three problems with that. Firstly, I've never met someone who gets so legitimately embarrassed by a friend teasing someone about having a crush on them that they feel the need to apologize unless they're trying to cover up some sort of feelings that they've got for that person. Secondly, there's no way in hell that, in all the time you two spent behind that rock-"

Alex cut him off indignantly. "You were looking?!"

Jonas laughed. "Make that _four_ problems," he corrected. "In all the time you were behind that rock, there was no way that Clarissa's general bitchiness was the only thing that got discussed. Like, I know that Nona's shy and all, but I've talked to _you_ before, and you can keep a conversation flowing well enough that that couldn't have been the only thing. Thirdly, you were _not_ acting like you'd just had an innocent conversation back before the stuff in the cave. You were all, like, shaky, but not in a bad way, you know? An excited shaky. And fourthly, the way you reacted to me admitting that I'd kept an eye on you when you went to talk to Nona spoke _volumes_."

"Okay, so you've found the bi girl's gross gay crush," Alex vented. "Are you happy now? Yes, she did kiss me behind that rock, and _yes_ , it's been on my mind all night, and _yes_ , I'm incredibly worried for her safety. It's, like, 2016, dude, these things aren't really that wild anymore. The _really_ weird thing here is how carefully you were watching me that whole time. Like, who does that? We're technically related, you know, so even if I wasn't, like, already occupied, you were being _reallllly_ creepy."

Jonas lit a cigarette and placed it in his mouth. He took a long drag. "When you grow up with bars on your windows, you either get really good at scoping out and avoiding the people that warrant having the bars there or become one yourself. I was the former. Camena's a nice place, and all, but old habits die hard."

"Oh," Alex said. "So you're, like, a regular Sherlock Holmes, eh? Super sleuth, or whatever? Tell me what I'm thinking right now, oh wise one."

Jonas rolled his eyes, still smoking casually. "This is a long trolley ride," he commented.

"It's a wide cavern," Alex responded, in a no-duh kind of tone.

"Man, Ren's gonna be pissed when we go this whole way and save him just for him to find out that his best friend stole his crush."

"Yeah, well, maybe he shouldn't have picked so cute a crush," Alex responded, completely unsympathetic.

"Can't argue with that." The two crossed the rest of the ravine in silence, the only noise being the occasional sound of Jonas's breath as he took another deep drag off his cig. They reached the other side and found an abandoned campsite.

"Some people camp here," Alex explained, "but... it's weird. I don't know why they'd just leave their tent."

"Looks kinda... dumpy, like... I dunno, it's been abandoned." He thought for a moment. "Like, yeah, I guess I could see this place being, like, a cool place to spend the night or whatever during the summer, or maybe late spring, but, it's like, hedging on fall now, so I don't know why anyone would've left this here." Alex shrugged and continued the ascent up the mountain, but as they got to the top of the small incline next to the campsite, something odd happened. There's a sound like a rewinding tape, and suddenly Alex and Jonas were back at the trolley.

"Whoa," Alex says. Jonas flashes her a quizzical look, and she explains. "I just had, like, serious deja vu. Like we've been through this place before." Jonas shot a disbelieving look. "I promise I'm not just going crazy! There'll be, like, a weird, kinda dumpy camping setup on the other side of this hill, I promise. You'll see!" As the two passed over the hill, the campsite came back into view, but, this time, she was greeted by a lively fire.

"Thought it was supposed to be dumpy," Jonas commented. It was supposed to be sarcastic and lighthearted, but his quiet tone made it clear that he was on edge. "Now, I wonder who lit that fire," he said. The two walked closer, and Alex felt an overwhelming desire to sit by the campfire. When she did, the rest of the world changed immensely. Jonas vanished, as did the rest of her surroundings. All that was there, in the black, empty void, was Alex and the fire. Then, suddenly, there was a short, blonde girl sitting across the fire from her. Alex opened her mouth to speak, but the blonde smiled in such a way that communicated that words were not needed. She scooted a little closer to Alex. Then closer. Then even closer, until the two were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder. The blonde placed her head on Alex's shoulder, sighed a happy sigh, and started to fall asleep. Alex looked back into the fire. A moment later, the girl was gone, and so was the fire. In its place was a new scene, a pile of rocks deep in the woods. There stood a girl with shockingly black hair and an orange jacket. She was sleeping on the ground.

Alex walked carefully over to wake her up, not honestly expecting to be successful in any way, as she could tell she wasn't intimately connected to the so-called real world or linear time right now. However, she was surprised to see that she was, indeed, able to wake Nona up. The Chinese-American girl yawned as she slowly opened her eyes. When she saw Alex, she smiled a happy smile and stretched out her back. "Mmmm, hey," Nona muttered, in the tone of someone who has just woken up from a good nap. "How are you doing?" Alex smiled at her, lifting her hand to push Nona's dark bangs out of her face. Nona looked around. "How did I get here?" A moment later, "Where is everyone?"

The teal-haired girl opened her mouth to respond, but quickly realized that she didn't exactly have control over her vocal chords. She couldn't hear her own voice, but based on the look on Nona's face, Alex wasn't saying wholesome things. Nona looked shocked for a moment, before that expression turned to one of betrayal. Alex wanted to apologize for the words coming out of her mouth, but she couldn't say anything. She tried to reach out to grab Nona's hand, to try to signal in some way that she wasn't saying whatever Nona was hearing, but Nona recoiled from her, a tear at the corner of her eye.

Another tape rewind. She was back in the stretch of woods she'd just came from. A series of images flashed by: a soccer ball, a magnetophone, another Alex in the river. Then, with a snap, it was all done, and everything was back to normal. Alex was pretty sure that everything she'd just seen had, in some way or another, happened. Despite being probably impossible because of the laws of physics and time and whatnot, the weirdness of that cycle of time and intersection of dimensions had an eerily real feel to it.

Her fears were confirmed a few minutes later, when Alex and Jonas came up on the location Alex had seen in her dream-like state, and Nona was, indeed, there. "Oh no," the Chinese girl said as soon as she saw Alex. "Nuh uh. You can stay right there. I've already seen you once tonight, and I've had enough of that."

"What do you mean," Alex asked, a bit timidly. Her voice was still projecting as "just fine", but there was a slight quiver in it that suggested that Nona's words were having a large effect on her.

"You know what I mean," Nona snapped.

"Um," Jonas said. "I think... I think I'm gonna go for a smoke... and I'll, like. Leave this up to you two. Come and get me when you're done with this."

As Jonas walked away, as soon as he was out of earshot, Alex broke from her stony stance to one that was much closer to pleading. "What do you mean," Alex asked. "I really don't know what happened. I was just... we were..." she sighed and placed her head in her hands, digging her palms into her eyes until she could see stars.

"You woke me up, and then you started talking mad shit about my grandpa. Said I was a disappointment to him. Said it was my fault he was dead. You said a lot of shit," she hissed.

"I..." Alex gulped back a crack in her throat, trying to keep a straight face in the face of Nona's disgust. "I don't know what I said," she admitted. "It was... it was really weird. I was, like, there, but not really there. I could touch you and hear you, but _I_ wasn't the one that was there. Whatever I said, I _swear_ it wasn't me. I promise you, I wouldn't do that to you. I... I'm sorry, for whatever this is."

Nona pondered it for a moment, still squinting untrustingly at Alex. But her oppositional stance stance began to soften as she continued to talk. "Explain what you mean," she said. So Alex spilled. She spilled everything. No point in lying, even if she wasn't already absolutely terrified of what might happen to Nona's already-shattered trust in her if she were to lie to her. She started with the cave, and finished up with the weird trip through multiple dimensions. "So... you mean to tell me that I woke up out here because of some weird ghost thing?"

"Yes," Alex affirmed.

"And that same ghost, or whatever, was the one talking through the you-but-not-you?"

"Something like that, yeah."

"I really want to believe you," she stated, hesitating a bit on the last few words.

"Then do," Alex begged. "Like," she began. She then stopped, trying to find the right words, and sighed, a bit frustrated with how difficult it was. "Like, I know we don't really know each other super well, but I feel like... I feel like I really want to. Like, you're just... you're just a fantastic person, and I'd really like to get to know you. And back on the beach, when you gave me that kiss, I felt my stomach drop and then flutter up and it was like nothing I'd ever felt before, and..." she trailed off. Then, a moment later and in a much quieter voice, she continued. "And I'm really sorry for whatever that thing that was pretending to be me said. I could never do that to you, I could never intentionally hurt you like that thing was. And I understand if you don't really believe this big huge story, it really probably does seem like a stretch, but... all I'm asking is that you give me another chance. I promise you that I'll make it up to you."

Nona considered this for a moment before throwing her arms around Alex. "I... I don't know," she admitted. "I want to believe you. I really do. And I want to give you another shot, because, like... I really think you're cute and kind of awesome, and I want to get to know you better, too, you know, but I... I just need some time to think."

"Well," Alex said. "There's a place back near the beach that we figure is pretty secure. A big old radio tower, you can't miss it. There's good air conditioning, and it's well-lit, and if you don't want to tag along with Jonas and I it'd be a really safe place for you to lie low for a while while you think."

"Um, yeah actually," Nona said, "that sounds perfect. I'll go back there, and meet up with you when you get back around."

"Yeah," Alex said.

"Well," Nona said, her arms still around Alex's shoulders. "I guess I'll see you there." She pulled the teal-haired girl into another tight hug, one that Alex cautiously reciprocated. "I'll see you later." With that, she turned around and ran off toward Harden Tower. Alex called for Jonas, and the two dredged on to find Ren.

* * *

Jonas had been on edge since the military base, when the ghosts had trashed the rest of his cigs, and, although Alex certainly didn't _endorse_ him fighting with Ren, but when Jonas's first words were something like "Christ, I need a smoke", antagonizing him about his punctuality probably wasn't the smartest option. Ren's idea sounded kind of good, or at the very least, a lot better than any of the other options they've got, so she had to side with him on going to get the radios. Now the problem was that, even if they were going to go through with Ren's idea - which, by the way, Alex _never_ asked to be the leader of this whole thing - Jonas wasn't going to be happy with sitting idly by. Now Ren was throwing insults at Jonas and saying that _he_ was the reason that the whole mess with the ghosts had started, and Jonas was saying that no, it was Ren's fault for eating the second brownie, and she was caught right in the fucking middle of it and didn't see a way out of this without hurting someone's feelings for absolutely no reason.

But then, like an angel sent down from heaven, Nona's voice rang out. "How about _I_ go with you, Alex?" Nona had read Alex's mind, both on the obvious level that she didn't want to piss off either of the two people she'd probably have to spend the next year with, and the unspoken level that Nona's presence would be, like, super appreciated in general right now. "I have some stuff I want to talk about anyway, this is as good a time as any to do it, I guess."

"Good idea," Alex said, raking her fingers through her hair out of stress. "And then the two of _you_ ," she said in an accusatory, somewhat belittling tone to the two feuding boys, "can get the kindergarten treatment, and sit together and work out your problems. And I swear to god that if by the time we get back you two don't have your shit sorted out, I'm leaving you on this island to deal with the ghosts on your own."

"It'd be awfully nice to be able to stretch out that much on the boat," Nona agreed. "With just Alex, Clarissa, and I, I might even be able to get a nap in before we go back home and I don't sleep for a week."

"I'm-" Jonas and Ren said at the same time. Ren deferred to Jonas, who continued in disbelief, "So you mean to say that you're going to go with Nona instead of _either_ of us? I don't know what angle you think you're trying to play here, Alex, but neither of us are happy with this." Ren nodded his head furiously in agreement, his brow wrinkled angrily.

"Whatever," Alex said over her shoulder as she followed Nona out of the tower. The two descended most of the way in silence, but when they got to the bottom Alex flopped to the ground, suddenly lying on her back. Nona turned around, looking concerned, but the teal-haired girl waved her arm dismissively before she could say anything. "I'm fine," Alex assured. "Just..." She trailed off, not really sure what she'd wanted to say. Nona walked back over to Alex, setting herself lightly down on the ground next to her.

Nona rummaged through her pockets, trying to find something, before pulling out two small pills in gel capsules, split evenly down the middle between orange and white. "Adderall," Nona asked, offering Alex one. She shook her head no. "You sure? I promise you, it'll help with the fatigue."

"I'm not really a drug person," Alex explained. "My cousin, Brad, took a Xan he didn't know was laced with heroin once. Spent a week in the hospital and almost died."

"Ah," Nona replied. There wasn't really a whole lot else to say. "I keep them with me as a just-in-case. Just in case I have a pop quiz, or something. Or just in case a night on Edwards Island goes all to shit and I need to keep you alert. Which, speaking of, you've been just, like, walking the whole night, haven't you?"

Alex stood up. "Yes. And now is not the time to stop. Let's go, we can talk on the way there."

The two took off at a healthy pace back toward the town. "Did you, like, at least get a nap like I did, after whatever happened in the cave," Nona asked.

"I woke up feeling like I'd been hit by a car. Because, I guess, technically speaking, the shockwave from opening the Source was probably not a whole lot different than getting hit by a semi." The two walked a bit further in silence. It was not comfortable. Alex was the first to speak. "There's kind of a real elephant in the room, isn't there," she asked.

"I guess so," Nona said.

"Do you... do you wanna talk about it," Alex offered. She wasn't very sure of herself here, and was absolutely terrified that she'd accidentally step on some toes and ruin her relationship with the girl before it'd even really become a thing in the first place.

Nona sighed. "I just... you, or not-you, I guess, said some really rough shit about my grandpa. I grew up with him while my parents fucked off and never really showed that they loved me, or even that they particularly gave a shit. But, like, my grandpa was a first-generation immigrant, and a really stout Catholic. He said it was always because of god that he was able to get out of China, and so he was going to defend god's word forever. I don't know if you've ever been, like, intimately familiar with what that entails, but it wasn't exactly pro-kissing-another-girl-on-the-beach. And like, it sucked that he was always so vehemently against it, because it's not something I can control, or anything, but I still loved him anyway, because aside from that he really wasn't a bad guy. And then he died a couple years ago, and it sucked because now I've got to live with my parents and pretend like they're not borderline neglectful and otherwise dogshit. And then earlier, when you woke me up, you said that I was embarrassing him because of who I love, and that he'd died to get away from me out of the shame, and that was only the _nice_ stuff."

"Oh my god," Alex whispered. "I'm so, so, so sorry that you had to deal with all of that. I really am. And I'm sorry that earlier, I caused you to have to deal with that kind of pain. But I swear, I didn't say any of those things, or anything else. When I saw you sleeping in the woods, I wasn't really in control of my body. Like, it's weird, but when I was there I wasn't really there. Please believe me when I say that I couldn't hear the words coming out of my mouth, and I couldn't choose them. I have no idea what all I said to you, but I'm so, so sorry that I put you in the position to have to go through that." The two walked a little longer, Nona seemingly considering Alex's story. They stopped in front of the lighthouse.

"I... I think I'll believe you. I haven't seen it yet, so I don't know why I _do_ believe you, but I do. I just... you wouldn't do anything to hurt me, would you?" Alex's limp body collapsed to the ground. Nona whipped around at the sound of her falling, and ran back the five feet or so to her, sliding down by her side. She opened the teal-haired girl's eyelids and flashed a light in her eyes, something that she remembered from her nursing education would tell you if a person was really in trouble or not. If the pupils didn't respond normally to light, you probably were dealing with something major. Luckily, they contracted quickly in response to the flashlight of Nona's phone. Nona shook Alex slightly, trying unsuccessfully to wake her. The only response she got was a slight murmur about some guy named Michael. There wasn't a whole lot Nona could really do to help, so she just sat down, crossing her legs. She watched the stars, something her grandfather had always done with her, and remembered the old tales, myths, and legends her grandfather had told her about them. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Alex's face twitch in some sort of discomfort, so she decided that she needed some way to make Alex more comfortable. This was accomplished by placing her teal-stained head in her lap. She played absentmindedly with Alex's hair as she looked back toward the constellations.

"Look, Alex," she murmured to herself, not really wanting to wake the girl up. "Those ones over there are part of a constellation that some old dude decided was the goddess of love. Wait, no, that wasn't right. She wasn't just the goddess of love, there was another patron deity for that. She was... oh, hell, I forget her name, but she was the goddess of undecided emotion. Weird that there'd be one of those, I know, but convenient, eh?" Nona fell silent for a moment. She stayed that way as she shot that goddess a little prayer.

"I forgive you," Nona whispered.

* * *

"So here we are again," the ghosts said through Clarissa. Alex's WAL radio was shattered in pieces scattered across the void once more. "You probably don't remember it, but this is the exact same place we were last time. For the most part, the events that happened to take us here were the same, too. But there were some... interesting anomalies."

"What, you mean me kissing Nona? I might say that that was a little more than just _interesting_. Unpredictable, maybe? I'm surprised that that'd worry you," Alex spat back. "How many times have we done this, that you've forgotten spontaneity so fully that something so innocent as that scares you? Are you afraid that maybe next I'll start to grow horns and bark?"

"There's nothing that has horns and barks, Alex..."

"Yeah, well, shut the fuck up, okay," she responded, feeling markedly less witty than she had a minute ago.

"Explain something to us," Clarissa requested.

Alex scoffed. "And why would I want to do that?"

The ghosts swiveled Clarissa's head around in an exaggerated manner. They even brought her hands up to her eyes, pantomiming surveying a vast, open land with a pair of binoculars. After a moment, they stopped, turned dramatically back to Alex and said, "I don't exactly see anyone coming to get you out of here. Might I urge that you play nice with the ones who hold your life in their hands?" Alex couldn't really argue with that. "Thank you," they said, sarcastically. "Now answer us this..."

The rest of the ghosts began to chime in, their voices echoing from all around the void, reminding Alex of just how not-alone she really was, and just how much danger she was truly in if the ghosts decided she was no longer amusing. "We... are... 97 - lost," they chimed. "Thousands more yet... behind us. We have... forgotten... faces. Names. People. All we... have - is anger. What... is it like... to love?"

"I-" Alex stammered, honestly taken aback. The edge in her voice was gone now, as she was utterly stunned by the sincerity of the ghosts' inquiry. "I-I don't know," she forced out defensively. "I can't say I've been in love."

"Malison... youth," they replied. "So... blind. Ignorant to... what is obvious."

Alex realized the direction they were heading in. "Oh, you mean Nona? Yeah, no. I mean, maybe _eventually_ , but like, we really only met tonight, and yeah she makes my stomach flutter and my heart pound like no one ever has before, but I also kinda really fucked things up with her, you know?" She thought for a moment before realizing the oxymoron in the end of that statement. They were the ghosts. Of course they knew. Hell, they probably even _did it_. "Tell you what," she decided, "you're not planning on letting me out of here, are you?"

"We never really are," Clarissa admitted.

"Let us go. Let us all go out there and go on with our lives; live, and love, and lose, and learn, and we'll come back here to you. We'll come back and tell you everything, and it'll be like you're living a life by proxy. I swear, I'll never go anywhere without a radio you can contact me by again, none of us will, and you can see and hear the world and everything in it." The ghosts did not respond. Alex went on, "You want to know what love is, don't you? Well, I promise you, as long as it's like _this_ ," she gestured around to the void, "or like _that_ ," she said, meaning the night she'd just lived through on repeat for who knows how long, "you will never find the answer to that question.

The ghosts murmured among themselves. At the start, some sounded - or felt, felt is perhaps a better word for judging the thoughts of a room full of ghosts that expressed their emotions less through words and more through the physical effects their presence had on people and on the environment - sympathetic, but the longer that she waited, the more hostile the crowd became. Finally, after a long moment, they talked through Clarissa. She was hissing through her teeth, her voice literally dripping with anger. "You have a lot of nerve, Alex, to stand there and play the victim. To tell us that, because of us, you will miss out on your life. Well, Alex, let me make something painfully clear to you: none of _us_ ever got the chance to look the people who took our lives in the face. And there's far from just the Kanaloa crew here. This island was the home to the Kanawea people - a proud island race, wiped off the face of this planet and out of the history books by your people. And for what reason? To make a main street to build a fucking gift shop on. For these people, the air you breathe, the food you eat, the water you drink, and the land on which you stand are all bought and paid for with their blood. Your very existence is an atrocity unspeakable. And you have the nerve to stand here and tell them that they have cost you?"

Alex had no response. What was there to say in the face of that? "I-" she began, but stopped to rethink her words. "I am sorry," she said. "For everything that was done to you. I know that it's probably meaningless, but to the people of the Kanaloa, I'm sorry that you were killed. It was truly an accident. And to the Kanawea, I am sorry for everything. I promise you that I will remember you. How could I ever forget any of this? But you all have to move on. There is a next life, where there is hope and restitution, a good to right the wrongs, or there is not, and to die is to cease to exist forever. Either would be better than reliving your lives and your deaths, experiencing this torture again and again."

"Your apologies mean nothing," Clarissa spat. "You are an affront to all that has died at the hands of this island and those who took it. You will die here, in this cold, dark void."

In Alex's chest, her heart started to feel like it was being squeezed. She dropped to a knee, clutching at her chest, but never hit the ground. She was now floating in midair, her arms dangling oddly behind her, her legs flopped in the air. She had no control over her movements, and all she could feel was an acute pain in her chest, like someone was literally tearing her heart out. After an immense effort, she was able to tear her head forward, seeing what was happening directly in front of her, and she saw a long, yellow strand of light being pulled from her chest. "Your soul," the ghosts whispered in her ear. "The essence of what makes you human, rather than stone. How you are alive, instead of a cold corpse at the bottom of a watery grave. With enough energy released, or enough hatred, the soul can be removed without killing its host, and another soul can be placed into the body. An immensely painful practice, a dark art taught to us by the Kanawea people. We are doing this to you. We will pilot your cadaver out into the world, and we will cause as much pain to everyone you have ever loved as we possibly can with your body as a puppet, and you will sit here in the void and watch through a window between dimensions, our actions on repeat for all of eternity. Then you may begin to know the pain we have felt. Then you may begin to join us in our insanity."

Alex held on for dear life, discovering that, if she struggled, she could slow the rate that her soul left her body significantly. It was excruciating to experience in the first place, and unspeakably painful to resist, but she had to hold on, and never stop fighting. She'd gotten this far, through however many cycles she'd been through, and wasn't about to give up now. Without realizing, she had begun to convulse in pain as she fought back, gritting and baring her teeth into the void. She screamed through them, sending strings of spit flying everywhere, and tensed herself as much as humanly possible against the immense force the ghosts were pulling her apart with. For a while, Alex held the ghosts at a standoff, with her soul stuck halfway out of her body, neither side making any progress in getting it any further in either direction. But the ghosts had numbers and strength, and Alex hadn't eaten in twelve hours, and hadn't slept in probably a day and a half, so she was weak, and after a while she saw the futility in her resistance. No matter what she did, no matter how long she fought for, it was already too late. The ghosts had bound her up here in the void, and she was never going to be able to leave. They were going to pilot her body out of here and ruin the lives of as many people as they possibly could under her name, and then get her killed. And she'd be powerless to stop them.

A blue flash of light caught both Alex and the ghosts off guard. A strange, faceless figure of a woman walked up to Alex, took her in her arms, and walked away. Alex, curled up in a ball in the being's arms, tried to ask through her exhaustion what the creature was. It cradled her closer, rocking lightly, and whispered sweet nothings into Alex's ear. Everything would be alright, it said, just go to sleep. She needed it. There was no danger here anymore.

* * *

"It used to be a military base."


	3. Chapter 3

"Be cool, Alex, just be cool."

"What was that," Ren asked, leaning casually against the chain fence as Alex and Jonas looked for a way to get over it. "I didn't hear you. Meant for me or nah?"

"It's nothing, Ren," Alex assured, putting on a convincing tone. It was a good thing she was a good liar; this was _not_ nothing. Not nothing at all. Unless she wanted to call a weird, hyperrealistic memory of her lips meeting Nona's on the beach tonight _nothing_ , wanted to call her _reaction to that_ and how just the thought of that was currently making her stomach pretend she was on a roller coaster _nothing_ , then this was definitely _something_. As for how it was even possible that she remember something that hasn't happened yet, Alex had no idea, but that was, like, number four on her list of things she gave a shit about right now. Number one, of course, was if it was real. Because, if it was real, then _wow_ it was the only thing she cared to be on this island for. Number two was why she was so excited by it. Alex was positively giddy at so much as the thought of it; she was doing this weird thing where she bounced on her toes instead of sitting still. This was an instinct from childhood, and was _heavily_ repressed since the time when people started judging such actions, but Alex literally couldn't help herself. Her third-largest concern was how to keep this all under wraps. She didn't know Jonas yet, and wasn't super into explaining her less-than-heterosexual tendencies to a stranger. As for Ren... Ren would probably be fine with it, if not for the fact that _he_ held a massive crush on the Chinese-American girl, as well. But, as evidenced by his noticing her whispered reassurances to herself under her breath, she wasn't doing a fantastic job of hiding her thoughts from the one person who knew her best.

"Mhm," he replied. His clearly disbelieving tone reinforcing Alex's worries. "Well, anyway," he continued, "there was something else I wanted to say, but it's slipping my mind." He thought for another second as he hopped over the fence, using the dumpster that Alex and Jonas had pushed up. "Oh, right! So, before we get down to the beach, there's this girl, Nona. She's just this girl and I'm totally into her and I want her to be totally into me, so just... just be cool, alright?"

"Be cool," Alex asked, caught a little off guard by his up-front-ness.

"Yeah, just... not like how you can sometimes get, you know."

Well. That's a problem. "Um, yeah... about that, there's something we need to talk about, Ren."

Ren, in the lead, stopped walking and turned around. "I'm all ears," he said, opening his arms to show how ready he was to listen.

"Alone, preferably," Alex responded, giving Jonas a look. The beanie-wearing teen shrugged, lit a cigarette, and walked about fifteen yards away to sit by a cliff face. When she felt comfortable that he was out of earshot, or at least far enough away to not hear accidentally, she turned back to Ren. Alex sighed deeply as she composed herself. "I'm not quite sure how to say this," she started.

"That's always a good sign," he teased. Alex smiled a bit.

"So I'm just going to put it plainly out there. Ever since we got to this island, I've been struck with this sort of... deja vu, I want to say, but, like, in the future, you know? And it's all been centered around this one premonition of what's going to happen on the beach tonight, only, instead of a premonition, it's like a memory, only of something that hasn't happened yet. And it's vivid enough that I don't think it's fake. You know me, I've never been super imaginative-"

Ren cut her off. "You're rambling," he said.

"Um," she stammered. "Yeah, I guess I kinda was. Thanks. So, anyway, I just want you to believe me when I say that this has already happened, just, like, in another life or something. Okay?" Ren nodded his head, a guarded expression on his face as he awaited the explanation of why she'd had to talk to him so desperately. "I kissed Nona. Or, Nona kissed me, rather. On the beach tonight. I don't remember the exact circumstances leading up to it, or anything, but we were alone on the beach and having a conversation about something that didn't really matter and then she kissed me. And I just needed to tell you, because I know that you've had this huge crush on her since like eighth grade, and you were hoping that tonight could be something between the two of you, and if it's not and that's because of me I just wanted you to be ready for it. Because I value you, Ren, like, a lot. I really do. And this is all probably just a crazy stupid hallucination because I'm coming down with some terrible sickness that's going to kill me, but-"

"Shush," he urged. "It's fine. Weird story, and usually not the kind of thing I'd expect anyone to share, and _especially_ not _you_ , but fine. I'm not sure that I 100% believe that you're, like, soul mates with Nona, or whatever this kind of thing would usually mean, but even if it turns out that you saw the future in a daydream, it's not that big of a deal."

"Are you sure," Alex asked hesitantly. She'd expected Ren to be mad, or something.

"Yeah," he said nonchalantly. "Well, like, it's obviously not _optimal_ that you swoop in on my crush, but it also wouldn't be the totally worst thing that's ever happened, you know? After all, it's less of a 'budding teen romance' and more of a situation where I think she's cute and a cool person who I've never gotten to really talk to because she's out of my league. And I make a lot of subpar decisions, but tying my well-being to a girl I've never really gotten to know wanting to date me isn't one of them."

"So, like, you aren't mad about it or anything? I thought you'd freak out that I, like, stole your girl or something."

Ren laughed. "I'm not a chauvinist, Alex. I have no claim to Nona, she's just as much yours as mine. Or anyone else's on this planet, for that matter. Or nobody, hell, I don't know what she wants to do with her life. But I'm rambling about things that don't really matter. Point is, I don't care enough about Nona to risk alienating the best friend I've ever had."

Alex looked away for a second before flashing Ren a large smile and wrapping him up in a hug. "Thanks for being understanding," Alex whispered.

Ren shrugged under her arms before she pulled away. He put his hands into his pockets and put his usual, shit-eating grin back on. "You two'd be cute together," he said. "What with your blue hair and her usual orange aethetic, you know? What was that called, complimentary colors or something?" Alex stifled a laugh at that stupid joke. "Besides, I've got a backup date. Lindsey's been not-so-subtly dropping hints every time we're in the same room."

"Lindsey? Lindsey Gennan? Tall, skinny blonde girl from fourth hour?"

"That's the one."

"Ha! If you two got together, I'd win five bucks in a bet," Alex mentioned. "Wait, does that invalidate the bet, now that I just told you?"

"Doesn't matter," Ren said. "I won't mention the bet if you don't. Besides, if Lindsey and I got together, me flaunting around that I won you $5 would _not_ be the ideal way to start a relationship off."

* * *

Alex was proud of her newfound ability to keep her mouth shut. She usually wasn't very good about that, as anyone who'd ever talked to her could verify, but she was finding out how to keep a secret with a straight face and a tight upper lip. Well, she _hoped_ it was a straight face; if it _wasn't_ , then no one had told her yet, so shame on them. Point was, Alex had a crush to hide, and thought she was doing so admirably. Clarissa had been Clarissa, throwing an insult or some other, more veiled harmful thought her way every chance she got, but Alex, for once, had been able to just ignore her. As such, the night wasn't feeling too tense (aside from the obvious source of tension for Alex, but _hopefully_ nobody else noticed that).

Suddenly, an elbow knocked into Alex's ribs. It didn't really hurt, it was just unexpected, and it knocked her out of her daze. She looked to her left, where the elbow had come from, and saw Jonas standing not far from her. He had a strange, sparkling look in his eye, as if he was amused. With a nod of his head, he communicated that he wanted her to follow him. She shrugged, picked her beer up off the sand, and headed after him, walking along the beach to the north, away from the fire. After a minute or two of walking, the pair arrived at an exposed coral reef, and Jonas stopped, taking a seat. He picked up a nearby stick and proceeded to antagonize the colony of microscopic organisms.

"Did you seriously just walk me out here just to show off your place at the top of the food chain," Alex asked, amused.

"No, I have something to say," he explained. "Just don't like being the one who breaks the silence. Thanks for doing that."

"Any time. I enjoy speaking."

"Mhm. That's actually kind of what this is about..." Jonas was surprised by knocking a chunk off of the coral. "Guess it's dead," he muttered.

"Aren't they, like, always already dead?"

"Who cares? What was I saying? Oh yeah. So, I know I wasn't supposed to be listening in earlier, when you pulled Ren aside, but you talk really loud and I couldn't help but overhear, like, the main point, which is that you're super into Nona and whatnot. So I was thinking, 'that's cool', and I kept a somewhat closer eye on her than I would've otherwise. Which is really great for you, because I know you haven't been paying super close attention, seeing as you've been caught up in your own head all night, so you would've otherwise never known the fact that Nona's been eyeballing you ever since we grouped up. I mean eyeballing, like, _hard_ , too."

Alex sighed. "Of course you had to snoop in on me like that. You're, like, a regular Sher-" she cut herself off, the confused look of someone who's lost their own train of thought present on her face.

After a long moment of silence, Jonas asked, "What was that?"

"Sherlock... Sherlock Holmes." Alex furrowed her brow, in deep thought. "Have I ever called you that before," she asked.

"Nope," Jonas said nonchalantly.

"Well, why do I feel like I've called you Sherlock Holmes, then?"

"Why is that a question that's being asked?"

"Because I'm feeling, like, super deja vu right now about something that's never actually happened before, and it's not the first time that that's happened tonight, and I'm trying to figure out if I'm going crazy or not."

"Well, regardless of if you're going crazy right now, I _am_ a total Sherlock, and I'm looking out for you. If you want to test out if that Nona kiss thing was real, go for it. I think you'd be in good shape." Jonas stood up, brushed the sand off his posterior, and walked back to the fire. When Alex didn't immediately follow, he called back over his shoulder, "You should probably head back with me. I've learned that people you're trying to get with aren't usually super into being ditched."

"Oh yeah, and I'm sure that three minutes around a fire with you and she'd just _swoon_ ," Alex shouted back.

Jonas chuckled. "I've won no less than three medals for being fantastic with the ladies," he said. Alex laughed as well. She considered hanging behind, just to spite him (because she wasn't really cool with him listening in on a private conversation like that), but decided against it pretty quickly. "Damn," he muttered as she caught up. "Guess I won't be receiving medal number four tonight."

As they came within range of the campfire, Alex couldn't help but notice that Clarissa was staring right at her. Alex was about to ask what was going on, before it became clear that she wasn't looking at Alex at all, but rather at Jonas, who had just given some sort of signal that had caused the older girl to burst out in a wide grin. "Hey, Jonas," she called.

"I am he," Jonas responded.

"We already drank out what all was in the cooler, and I'm an idiot who left all of the beer back at main street. Ren and I were going to go back into town to get it, you should come with. It'll be a fun getting to know you exercise." Jonas shrugged and followed. Nona went to come along, but Clarissa addressed her directly. "Nona, will you be a dear and stay to tend to the fire? I'd very much appreciate that."

"But," Nona muttered, rubbing her hands together.

"It'd really be great if you'd stay. You know how I hate the cold," Clarissa said. "Besides, you can't just leave Alex here all alone. Give her some company. Come to think of it, you don't know each other that well, do you? That's an injustice. I talk poorly about her, but she's really not that bad a kid." Nona started to protest, but Clarissa had already turned and walked away.

"Well," Alex said, "that's one way to make a conversation feel awkward from the start."

Nona laughed. "Yeah," she agreed. "I mean, I'd _honestly_ wanted to talk to you tonight, but now it just doesn't feel genuine."

"Well, I'd honestly and truly wanted to talk to you, too," Alex agreed. "So let's just, like, throw out the forcedness of this and pretend Clarissa didn't make this super weird and just go with it?"

"Ha, yeah. Sorry about her," Nona offered. "Like, I see that you aren't letting it get to you, but she's been throwing as much shade as she can all night. She gets this way sometimes, I'm not sure why, it's just... I'm sorry if she starts getting, like, super aggressive."

"There's no need to apologize for that," Alex said as she walked around the fire toward Nona, seeking to stoke the coals that kept it running. "Not like you're the one trying to bug me all night."

"I guess, it's just that..." Nona trailed off, sounding a little unsure of herself. She fiddled with her beanie before continuing. "I feel a little responsible for her, I guess? Like, we're best friends, and we've been super close for a couple of years, and she always looks to me for reassurance that what she's doing is right. And I don't always greenlight her, because, you know, she doesn't always do good things. But I, like, _never_ tell her no, and it kind of feels like I'm skirting my job to keep her worse impulses in check.

Alex took a sip from her cup, thinking for a minute. "I see what you mean, but it's no hard feelings either way. I totally wouldn't blame anybody for something they didn't do; Clarissa's problems are Clarissa's fault, not yours." Nona looked unsatisfied, so Alex tried a different route. "Thanks for being open and honest about that," she said. "That's, like, some pretty deep stuff that you're just getting into with me. I'm glad that you feel like you can trust me enough to tell me that kind of thing." Nona shrugged and gave a shy smile. That was when it hit her. The memory of kissing her, the one that Alex had so successfully suppressed in order to carry on this conversation like a normal human, was suddenly right back at the top.

"What can I say, you just give off that kind of vibe."

"Ha, y-yeah," Alex stuttered, avoiding eye contact. Her breath was uneven now.

Nona seemed not to notice right away. "You just have this really... I dunno, this is going to sound really weird, because it's something I got from my grandpa, but... you've got this really wise aura." Nona blushed. "I swear, it's not superstition! Well, I guess it _is_ superstition, but, it's not _solely_ superstition, if that makes sense, and - and I've lost you, haven't I?"

"Wh-what," Alex said, snapping back into focus.

"Oh. Yeah, I see," Nona said, a little embarrassed, a little pissed. "Just zone out. That's totally cool. I'm sorry that I'm such a bore."

"No! No, Nona, that's _totally_ not what was happening there. I'm, like..." Alex looked for a way around admitting what she was really thinking, but couldn't find one. "I'm... ah, god, I'm really gonna have to do this, aren't I? Please don't hate me for this, or anything, but, like..." Alex glanced up at Nona to see her in a closed-off position, standing tall with her arms crossed, but paying attention. "I've been having this weird vision all night, that feels like a memory, but that can't be a memory, because it hasn't happened, of something happening on the beach tonight. And I was just... trying to suppress that thought. Or memory, or whatever you want to call it. I promise I wasn't intentionally ignoring you, I was just trying to get that thought out of my head."

"Hm. And this thought, what is it about?"

"Aha, that's... you see, that's the thing I really wanted to avoid having to tell you about, because... because... fuck, why did I back myself into a corner like this?"

Nona's stance softened a little bit. "Backed yourself into a corner? How did you end up doing that?"

"Because, um... the thing is, this thought... this thought was about you." She corrected herself, "Or, not _just_ you, it's more about me _and_ you. Like, something that I have a really strong premonition that will happen tonight, and it's like, a thing that I'm trying to suppress."

"Spit it out," Nona demanded.

"I hate you for this," Alex deadpanned. Nona didn't budge. Incredibly hesitantly, she continued, "It's, um... it's you kissing me. Behind that rock over there, we're just standing there, mid-conversation, and then you kiss me. And I'm getting really strong vibes about it, and it's weird, and I'm sorry, please don't hate me for it. Do you hate me for it?"

Nona's expression was unreadable. "So... just to get this straight, you've got a premonition that I'm going to kiss you tonight?" Alex nodded her head. "And you're trying to repress this thought?"

"Well-"

"Well as in 'it's a bad thing', or well as in 'it's not a bad thing but it's not something I should really be thinking about right now'?"

"Closer to the second one, but... look, the cat's already out of the bag, I've got a huge crush on you."

"You? Have a crush on _me_?"

"I... yeah. Yeah, I do."

Nona leaped toward her, Alex barely reacting in time to stop the both of them from falling backwards into the dying fire. Nona cupped Alex's face in her hands and stole a deep kiss, far longer than Alex had remembered. Alex pulled back after a few seconds, more shocked than anything else. Nona was breathing heavily, and said in between breaths, "I... can't... believe... I finally... got... to do that." Alex giggled, and the Chinese-American girl went in for another kiss.

Some time later, the other three returned from town, Jonas and Ren carrying a cooler each. Nona and Alex were sitting by the fire, shoulder-to-shoulder with their backs to the cliffs. Nona heard them coming, and asked, "Should we split up, or act like this isn't a thing, or something?"

Alex shrugged. "I'd imagine they already know. I told Ren about having a crush on you, Jonas... overheard. And I'd imagine that, given Ren's notorious running mouth, Clarissa heard at least _something_ about it while they were out and about."

"Oh, come on," Clarissa whined loudly. Both girls whipped their heads around to see what the cause of the commotion was.

"I win," Jonas laughed. "Pay up." Clarissa glared at him, but took out her wallet nonetheless.

Ren, leading the pack, reached Alex and Nona significantly before the others did. "What was the bet," Alex asked.

"Jonas put five bucks on you two being together before we got back," Ren explained. "'Rissa thought it would take all night."

"Well, glad to hear that I can help the newbie get some cash," Nona chuckled.

"I'm gonna get you back," Clarissa vowed as she and Jonas reached the fire. A malicious gleam got into her eye. "Let's play truth-or-slap."

* * *

That fire had _definitely_ not been there a minute ago. Neither had the weird, ghostlike reflection of Alex in the river that moved independently.

"Who are you," Alex asked cautiously.

"When you see Nona, wake her up but don't talk to her," the not-Alex responded. "Some things are better left dead."

"What does that mean? How is that applicable to my current situation?!" But the other Alex didn't respond. She was already gone. Movement in her periphery caught Alex's eye. She snapped her head toward the left, and saw the glowing, ghostly figure of a short, blonde woman playing tricks with the soccer ball that Alex had kicked a moment ago, before Jonas had vanished. The woman stopped messing with the ball when Alex turned to see her, though. "Are you the one that was kicking the ball back at me earlier," Alex asked tentatively.

The ghost grinned and shook her head.

'So then... if that wasn't you, who _was_ kicking the ball back?"

The woman didn't respond.

"Hello? Are you mute?"

She shook her head yes.

"Well then. That's an interesting twist. Are you a ghost?"

She considered for her minute, shrugged as she nodded, and tried to pantomime some more elaborate response.

"I suppose whether you're a ghost or not isn't that important. Are you friendly?"

The ghost nodded again, and beckoned for Alex to follow her. The blue-haired girl shrugged and decided to tag along. A small, red hole opened in the air, and the ghost walked through it. Alex stopped at the entrance. "Yeah, no, not following the mute ghost into hell. Sorry, not sorry." The woman seemed to hear her, as she leaned back out through the portal and rolled her eyes before beckoning again.

"Not doing it," Alex insisted. "You seem nice and all, but I've seen too many horror movies to trust that thing. No thanks."

The woman sighed deeply, thought for a minute, and then mouthed a word at Alex.

"What are you..? Oh, are you trying to say something to me? Sorry, I wasn't watching the first time, can you go again?"

She smiled sweetly, nodded, and then mouthed the word again, slowly and pronouncedly. "Nona," she mouthed.

"Nona?"

She nodded her head.

"I should follow you because Nona's in there."

She nodded her head again. Alex sighed and weighed her options. On the one hand, if she followed the other girl through this portal-like thing, she was _at least_ 80% sure that she'd come out the other side in hell. But on the other hand, what if Nona _was_ actually through this door? It probably wouldn't be the sweetest thing for Alex to just _leave_ Nona in wherever this place was. "God," she muttered to herself, "am I _seriously_ even _considering_ doing this right now?" She raked her fingers through her hair and tried to talk some sense into herself. "Come on, Alex, think about this rationally. There's like, a very high chance that going after that woman will cause you a _lot_ of pain, and only a very small chance that doing so will not. No _logical_ decision calculus could lead me to go through that door." But _Nona_ could be on the other side of that door, and that kind of threw all logic and whatnot right out the window. "God, I hate myself," Alex said as she jumped through the hole in space.

On the other side was nothing but darkness. Like, an _impressive_ amount of darkness. "The void," Alex whispered. "I'm back." She wasn't quite sure how the place felt so familiar to her, but it most certainly did. She looked around for the ghostly woman, but she was nowhere to be seen. Off in the distance, though, there was a bluish light. Seeing as it was the only feature in this barren, dark place, Alex decided to go after it. She walked toward the source of the light for a long moment, and when she reached it, she found that it came from a window that peered into some antiquated version of reality, circa 1950. Or perhaps it wasn't a window, but rather a mirror; it was ornately decorated around the edges, much like a mirror. On the other side, two women were tinkering with some equipment in a laboratory. One dropped a glass full of some clear substance, and both jumped back in shock, before eventually laughing, seemingly marking the incident as impactless. The one who hadn't dropped the beaker looked quite a bit like the ghostly woman who Alex had followed into the void. The scene on the pane changed. It seemed to be some time later, and both women were again tinkering with various items in the laboratory, but this time they all appeared to have something to do with radios. On a bulletin board behind them was a picture of a submarine, several faces, and a map of Edwards Island, with red lines of string interconnecting the photos, seemingly at random. The two were hard at work, but before the sight of them both faded away, Alex witnessed as the brunette kissed the blonde on the cheek.

Then the next scene played. The taller, dark-haired woman was gone. It was night, and the blonde was the only one in the laboratory. She held a radio in her hand, and seemed to be listening intently to the noises spewing out of it as she paced back and forth across the lab. She stopped, though, when something in the mirror caught her eye. She turned toward the mirror, dropping the radio, and walked slowly toward it, her brow furrowed in an inquisitive look. She mouthed a word, ever so slightly. Maggie, Alex thought she'd said. The woman neared the mirror, getting closer and closer, and raised her hand. She reached out to the mirror and set her palm on it, and suddenly she was gone from the other side of the mirror, and standing right next to Alex. The woman appeared not to see Alex, but looked around the void, trying to gain her bearings in an area where she had literally no discernible surroundings. After a moment, she turned back to the mirror, starting to panic, and banged her hand on it. She screamed at the mirror for help, to let her leave, but it didn't appear to be willing to cooperate as she began to break down into tears. She hit at it ever harder, but the metallic surface of the mirror didn't even shake under the full weight of the woman's desperate attempts to shatter it. She fell to her knees, her face a mess with tears streaking down her cheeks, and she slumped against the mirror.

The image vanished, and Alex was alone with the mirror. She turned to look at it and was greeted with a familiar face. The soft, round face of Nona. Alex cocked her head to one side, and the reflection of Nona did the same. Alex raised her right hand, and Nona raised her left. Alex reached out to touch the surface of the mirror, and expected to see Nona do so, as well, but when her fingers made contact, the mirror shattered. The whole void around her shattered, cracks running across the sky in an instant, and light began to peer in. The mirror fell to the ground in pieces, and the void disintegrated in a similar way.

Although she was back in her normal world, Alex felt as if she was in a dream when she moved. All her limbs felt light, all her movements airy. She got her bearings. She was still in the woods, albeit a different neck of the woods. There was an odd pile of rocks to her left, and a sleeping girl at the base of that pile. The orange beanie gave away Nona's identity. Alex reached down to wake the girl, but remembered what her reflection from the river had told her. ' _When you see Nona, wake her up, but don't talk to her_ ', the not-Alex had told her. "Well," she muttered, "ghosts have gotten me in good places today. Ghosts that show themselves, anyway. What the heck, let's do it."

Alex reached down to make contact with Nona's shoulder, shaking her gently. Nona turned over, as she had been facing toward the rock, and made eye contact with Alex. She gave a sleepy smile and tried to blink the tiredness from her eyes. She started to say something, but Alex put a finger over her mouth to indicate that she wasn't going to talk. She just watched as Nona picked herself off of the ground. When the Chinese-American girl had stood up, she tried to blow a few loose strands of hair out of her face. This effort failed miserably, as it just caused twice as much of her long, black hair to fall into her face. Nona pouted adorably, and Alex stifled a chuckle. The teal-haired girl reached over to part the offending hairs, parting them to the side, and let her hand dangle there, her fingertips at the side of Nona's face. Nona blushed a little, breaking eye contact, but leaned subconsciously forward, inviting Alex to take a kiss. She leaned in to do so...

"Hey, Alex? Earth to Alex?" Alex's eyes snapped open. She was laying on the ground, Jonas standing over her. He looked concerned. "You alright? You were laying there on the ground, unconscious, for a long while. I was kind of worried, honestly."

"Yeah," Alex muttered, more than a little disappointed that she'd been disturbed just moments before she was ready to leave her dream. "I'm still breathing."

* * *

"I swear, if the two of you don't stop fighting, I will kill you both before the ghosts ever get a chance. Don't test me." Usually Alex was at least somewhat patient, but tonight was an exception. There were clearly bigger issues than whether Ren's second brownie or Jonas's venturing into the cave was the bigger mistake made a few hours ago, but the two boys seemed to disagree. To make matters worse, they were forcing her right into the middle of it, demanding that she choose one of them to take down to get the WAL radios. Alex looked around desperately for a way out, when her eyes landed on Nona. The two hadn't talked much since the beach, as Nona was more than a little miffed that the teal-haired girl had disappeared at the stack of rocks, despite Alex's protests that she hadn't exactly had a choice in the matter. Alex hoped that Nona was over that, because she could _really_ use some time alone with her. Nona flashed a small smile, signalling that she felt Alex's pain, and was willing to help her out.

"So, are you going with me? Or with the guy who got us into this whole mess," Jonas asked.

"Um, excuse you, it was _definitely_ your fault," Ren objected.

"Neither of you," Nona sighed. "Alex, let's go."

The red-jacketed girl grinned widely as she followed Nona out of the tower. "Make up, you two. We've still gotta work together to find Clarissa, and you're not helping," she called over her shoulder. She slammed the door behind her before either could respond to her jabs. Nona waited for Alex at the top of the stairs, and the two interlocked fingers and walked down together. "Thanks for helping me out back there," Alex said.

"Any time," Nona replied. "Has he been like that the whole night? Jonas, I mean. He seemed, like, _unbearably_ antagonistic."

Alex sighed. "No, he's a cool dude, I promise. So is Ren. They're just both under a lot of pressure right now; we all are. They're handling it, in their own way. I'm like, _reasonably_ faithful that they'll both be back to normal by the time we get back."

"Hm. If you say so." Nona sighed. "You know them a lot better than I do. Hell, you know _everyone_ here a lot better than I do, except for maybe Clarissa. It just struck me how completely stupid agreeing to come to this thing tonight was. Like, I'm glad I did, but... it was totally out of character for me to do this. Before tonight, _we'd_ never talked before, all I knew about Ren was that he was a class clown who more than likely had a huge crush on me, and Jonas was a total wild card. And then, just to exacerbate the issue, ghosts happen and they take the only person I know away."

"Speaking of which, are you, like, alright? You seem to be handling the whole thing with Clarissa pretty well, but... "

"But my best friend, and probably the only person I've ever been comfortable being my real self around is vanished into thin air, at the whim of malicious ghosts, and has a very good chance of just straight-up dying if we can't find her in the next few hours? Yeah, it's kind of a rough situation. I'm... avoiding the problem, more than anything, really. If I just don't think about it, then I can still, like, function and stuff. Functioning is net better than not functioning."

The pair passed the lighthouse and climbed over the metal fence before Alex responded. "She'll be alright, Nona," she said quietly, reassuringly. "I promise. We won't leave here without her."

"I wish I could believe you, Alex, I really do. And I feel like I should; you're, like, a magical person. You've seen a lot more than I have tonight, and you're still holding it together fantastically, while I'm over here shaking out of my fucking skin." Nona laughed dryly. Before Alex could respond, she dropped to the ground, unconscious. Her body crumpled on the concrete sidewalk, and Nona was down just a second after her. The shorter girl's training from the nursing class she'd taken for half a semester in sophomore year before getting tired of it finally came in use, as she quickly checked to make sure that Alex was still breathing and hadn't fallen into some sort of coma. Flashing her phone's light into Alex's eyes showed that the pupils still dilated as was healthy, so it was unlikely that any kind of overdose had caused this sudden blackout. "Well," Nona said, to no one in particular. "Guess I'm alone now. Fun times." After a moment, she felt insecure; what if Alex could hear her, in whatever state she was in now? Nona felt like she owed more to her than _that_ comment; after all, she _was_ trying to make the relationship she'd secretly wanted for most of high school work. So she carefully moved her right hand over to Alex's head, and started tussling her teal hair. "Sleep well, Alex. You deserve it." The two sat like that for a moment, until the ghosts decided that Nona looked too comfortable in this situation. So they fixed that.

"Well, well, well," a sly, familiar, feminine voice called from above. Nona whipped her head around to try and place the origin of Clarissa's voice, but was unsuccessful. She shrugged, deciding she'd only imagined her friend's voice. "Oh, come on, dear, you've got to try harder than _that_."

"Okay, definitely didn't imagine that," Nona muttered. "Clarissa? Where are you," she called out into the night. "It's too dark for me to see very far, where are you?"

Clarissa giggled hauntingly. "I'm out here somewhere; come and find me," she called in a childish, singsong voice straight out of a horror movie. Nona peered in the direction of Clarissa's disembodied voice, leaning toward it in a subconscious effort to get closer to her. She was considering running after her, when Alex shifted suddenly. Nona's head snapped back toward her friend turned girlfriend, but the tremor had turned out only to be a spasm in the midst of sleep, as she was not awake. Nona let her eyes rest on Alex's sleeping face for a long minute, before Clarissa called again from the darkness, " _Hello_? Are you going to come and find me? It's so lonely out here, with just the ghosts to keep me company."

Nona's eyes snapped back and forth, between the patch of night sky that Clarissa's voice seemed to be coming from and Alex, trying to decide whether to stay or to go. She bit her lip in her indecisiveness and thought for another moment, before deciding to stay where she was. After all, Alex had told her that the ghosts had possessed Jonas back at the military base. With Clarissa missing all night, that was probably what had happened. Or, just as likely, they hadn't even brought the possessed Clarissa _here_ , instead just emulating her voice for whatever their purposes were. Nona sat very still next to Alex, gripping her hand tightly.

"Alright," the voice called, far away. "If you won't come to me, I guess I'll come to-" then suddenly, from just behind Nona's ear, "you." Nona jumped, whipping around in a semicircle, to face toward the direction of Clarissa's voice, and she saw the older girl, mere inches away from where the back of Nona's head had previously been. She grinned maniacally, two red dots where her eyes had once been. "What, didn't expect to see me so soon? Or is it the eyes thing? I bet it's the eyes thing; that's usually what throws people off the most."

"I... C-Clarissa? Is that you? I mean, _really_ you, not the ghosts or whatever?"

The redhead cackled. "Is there really a difference anymore? I am the ghosts. I am Clarissa. We're inseparable! It's glorious, a new life for us all."

"I don't... I don't know that I necessarily believe you," Nona said cautiously. "If all the ghosts wanted was to share our lives, and let us lead them, then why are they spending so much time and energy on terrorizing us?"

"Oh, honey," Clarissa whined, her voice dripping with disappointment so potent it was bordering on the unbelievable. "It hurts that you'd say that, it really does. We don't want to _terrorize_ you, we just want to have a life again. But, then again, we also need to show you who's in control. Hint: the answer is not _you_." To prove her point, Clarissa snapped her fingers and the previously-dark overhead streetlight flickered on, giving off a dark orange glow. "But enough about _us_ , let's talk about _you_. And more specifically, the choices you've been making lately." Clarissa gestured toward the sleeping girl on the ground. "Like, _really_? You decided that, of all the people in the world you're going to fall in love with, it'd be _this_ one? Tsk, tsk, tsk; not a smart choice."

"I-" Nona stuttered. "What? I didn't... I've got... what do you mean?"

Clarissa exaggeratedly rolled her ghostly eyes. "You know _exactly_ what I mean. You could've had anyone in the entire fucking world, and you decided to go after the single worst one. Think about it from literally any angle. How will your _parents_ react? What would your _grandpa_ think? What do you think _I_ think about you dating the annoying little sister that got Michael killed? Hm?"

"I... I didn't think..."

"Yes, that's precisely the problem, you _didn't_ think. This is precisely your problem, you never think these things through! I can't carry you around through life and make all your decisions forever, Nona."

That's not true," she protested meekly. "I make my own choices, I don't need your help."

Clarissa scoffed. "Oh, sure. You're _totally independent_ , aren't you? Let's list the things you owe me. First, your life, for all the things I've done just to keep you breathing over the years. Remember all those times you've called me in the night sobbing because you're too much of a fucking baby to deal with your own problems? I do. Second, all of your friends, because, let's be honest, the only reason those snakes didn't kick you to the curb was because you're their bridge to get to _me_. If I hadn't shown up, you'd be all alone. And you've even only got _that_ ," she spat, gesturing toward Alex, "because of me! I was so damn tired of hearing you whine about how hard it is to be alone that I decided to just take the fucking bullet, drag everyone away so you can have some sliver of a chance with the girl of your dreams on the beach, and you give me no thanks, _no recognition of any kind_."

Nona was trembling now, tears running down her cheeks. "Why," she asked, her voice barely a whisper, cracking on every word. "Why would you say that?"

"Why? Out of everything I just said, you have the gall to just ask _why_? God, you're pathetic. You have no idea just how much I've done for you, do you? All you can think about is yourself. Whatever, it's not like you're the only one who acts like that. So let's have a different chat, one more intimately related to you, so that maybe my words will crack through your thick, selfish skull. You. And. Alex. Are. Not. Going. To. Work. Out. Understand that? She'll get tired of you and all your shit, just like I've gotten tired of you, and she'll leave you out to dry, completely on your own. And your parents? Oh, they'll find out sooner or later, and when they do you'll be thrown out of the house just like the disgrace you are. And your grandfather's memory will be tarnished, because he raised a little gay girl. And you'll go to your grave knowing that you ruined it all, your whole family, your whole life, for just a _shot_ at someone who wasn't willing to put up with your shit." On the ground, Alex began to stir. "Oh, look," Clarissa spat, vitriolic as words can be, "sleeping beauty wakes once more. Well, I suppose I've spent about as much time as I can really afford to here. Good bye!" With that, Clarissa was gone.

Alex shook the sleep out of her eyes, with the help of added shaking from Nona's trembling thighs under her head. "Hey," she groaned groggily. "What'd I miss?" Nona's lack of a response woke her up faster than any response could have. The red-jacketed girl sat up, leaning her weight on her left arm as she suppressed a yawn. She blinked her eyes three times rapidly, and then seemed to be finally awake, as she noticed her girlfriend in tears, ever-so-slowly contorting into the fetal position. Alex scooted quickly toward Nona, wrapping one arm around her shoulders, the other awkwardly attempting to cradle her head. She whispered sweet nothings in Nona's ear, but they seemed to have the opposite of the intended effect, as Nona only cried harder, so she changed strategy, and did her best to comfort her in silence. Gently running her fingers through her hair, her hand across Nona's back, she let her turn the hunting jacket from stop sign to a dark, damp ruby. After a while, Nona began to calm down, and, although Alex was reluctant to let her go, she allowed her to pull away at her own pace.

"Th-thanks," Nona said in between long sniffs. "I'm... I'm sorry, that you had to see that."

"Don't be," Alex assured, "you never have to apologize for anything like that. Not to me, and not to anyone. Everyone needs a good, long cry every now and then, right?" Nona smiled meekly to the ground. "I mean it," Alex continued. "For me, at least, you never have to apologize. I don't just want to see the shiny-happy-sunshine parts of you, alright? I want to see the sobbing at 3 AM, too."

Nona laughed dryly, but it sounded more like she was trying to shove back a sob. "God," she whispered, "you're too fucking good for me."

"Hey! Cease that... wrongness!" Nona gave her a look like she'd just said something incredibly stupid, which, well, she had. Alex laughed. "I swear that sounded better in my head, but, you get the point, right? It's alright to get a little messed up in the head some nights, we all do. It's not alright to think that you can't be, or to think that you don't deserve someone who wants to help you through it." Alex pulled Nona's chin gently upward, making eye contact with her, and continued in a voice lowered in volume and full of concern, "I care about you, Nona. A lot. And you don't have to say or do anything to make me care about you; no matter what, I'll be here for you. But please, when you need a shoulder to cry on, don't hide it from me. We're a team now, we can get through this together, okay?"

"Yeah," Nona breathed, tears at the corners of her eyes again. "Yeah, I guess so. I'm still... sorry... that I'm such a mess... _You're_ the one who's really having to deal with all of this, I'm just over here crying about-" she stopped suddenly.

"Crying about what, Nona? Do you want to talk about what happened while I was... out?"

"I... yeah. I guess it couldn't really hurt... I'm just... I'm just such a mess. I haven't even done anything all night, I've just been sitting around talking and waiting and doing nothing and now as soon as _one little, tiny thing happens_ , I'm a sobbing mess. And you're out here saving us all and haven't even broken a sweat..."

"Hey," Alex protested, "less self-depreciation, more unearthing the roots of your worries so we can resolve past traumas."

"Right... So... while you were asleep, Clarissa, or the ghosts, I guess, showed up and... said some not-so-nice things. About me. About _us_. She said..." Nona coughed, and tears started to roll gently down the side of her cheek again. "She said... she said that she was the only reason I have any friends, and the only reason why I'm not alone..."

"That's just not true, though," Alex interjected. "You've got, like, _tons_ of friends."

"Yeah, but I'm not really close to any of them. We're just kind of... acquaintances, I guess. Clarissa's been my rock for years, but that wasn't even the bad stuff. She said that I was disappointing her by dating you, and that I was a disgrace..."

"How? That's... that's just so bullshit? She literally hooked us up earlier. Like, remember when she handed Jonas $5? Besides, she and I are making up, I think. It was a bit rocky there, for a while, but now it _seems_ like we're getting along alright."

"I don't know... what we're doing... it's not, like, _normal_ , strictly speaking, you know?"

"What part about it? The part where there's ghosts? Because I could totally see that not being the most normal thing, but I don't know if that should really be something we take into consideration here, considering that we technically started dating before I broke everything. Or the part where neither of us are male? Because, like, I don't know about you, but I've known that there was at least a 50/50 shot that I didn't end up with a guy since I was, like, ten or something."

Nona sighed. "It's... it's just," she said, trying to formulate a sentence. "I don't get it, how you're just so... nonchalant about this. If anyone from my family knew, they'd literally lose their shit on me. They might _actually_ explode, not even just a figure of speech."

"Jeez, I'm sorry," Alex said. "That's... that's really rough. I'm sorry. Would they really freak out that bad?"

"Yeah. Yeah... it'd be... it'd be pretty bad. I'm not sure that I'd be welcome at home anymore, if they found out that I was with you."

Alex gulped. "I... maybe Clarissa, or the ghosts, or whatever, were right. Maybe this is a bad idea. I'm not worth that kind of thing, Nona..."

Nona turned her head toward her, bewildered. "Are you trying to get rid of me," she whispered, stung.

"No! No, I'm not! I'm just... I don't know, Nona. You're absolutely incredible, and I just want the best for you, and it seems like I'm really not the best for you. Like you just said, if your parents found out about us, they could kick you out!"

Nona looked back out over the ocean. "Yeah," she whispered. "They could do that." She crossed her arms as she thought for a long moment. "But... I've been in the closet my whole life. Clarissa was the only person I ever told. Well, now _you_ know, but... the point is, I've always kept secrets well. I think I can do it for a little longer. There's only a year of high school left, right?"

"Nona, for real, I'm not worth putting it all on the line like that. Seriously, we only really met tonight, and this is a _really_ big deal that you're talking about with your parents. At least think about this a little longer than you have."

"Yeah, I know it's probably not the wisest move, but..." Nona sighed. "Understand this: I've had a massive crush on you for years. Ever since middle school, really. And I don't think that standard crushes are technically supposed to last that long. So I wanna give this a shot, you know? And it won't all go to shit. Like I said, I keep my secrets really well, and for the most part my parents don't pry. Mom might suspect something, but she'd rather not know than have to look deeper about it."

"I swear to god, Nona, if anything happens to you, and I mean anything at all, let me know. You're too good for me."

* * *

Alex tuned the radio, just like always, 120-124.3-snap, just like always. She passively watched the radio fly away from her, and with a detached, bemused look on her face, saw it pop into a thousand pieces, scattering all over the floor. Just like always. She folded her arms over her chest and sighed, more disappointed by the explosion of her lifeline than distressed. She'd expected it to burst like a balloon, honestly; she remembered doing this before. The teal-haired girl looked around through the void, scoping out where the ghosts would approach from, and tapped her foot. It didn't matter if time was an infinite loop, and she wasn't really missing out on anything, she was wasting time here that she could be spending in the next time around, with Nona. After the ghosts were tardy by a couple of minutes (or whatever the void-between-space-and-time _equivalent_ was to a couple of minutes), Alex got impatient. "Yoohoo," she called into the darkness, "I'm over here! Come and get me, big ol' bad ghosts! Just a little, tiny, defenseless teen hanging out, waiting to be abducted by big, bad, scary ghosts! Probably got another sixty years or so of life in me that you can steal!" Still nothing. "Well," Alex muttered to herself, "that was kind of disappointing."

"I'm terribly sorry," a twenty-something female voice said softly from behind her.

Alex leaped away from the source of the noise, yelping involuntarily in surprise. The unknown woman giggled at how high her voice had gone, and Alex glared into the darkness. "Come out where I can actually see you, if you're going to laugh at me," she called.

"About that... you're going to have to come over _here_ , I can't come to _you_."

"And why is that?"

"Relax, I'm not going to _eat you_ or anything. I'll explain when you get here; just follow the sound of my voice."

Alex shrugged. Her senses were telling her that this probably was a terrible idea, but what other option did she really have? "Fine. Just... keep talking, I guess."

The disembodied voice complied, and actually had some pretty interesting stories to tell. She hadn't been trapped here for as long as some of the others had, but it'd been pretty long. There were tears in the walls of the void, windows into which one could see reality, if one found them. Most formed in obvious places; for such holes to be torn in spacetime, enormous amounts of some form of energy had to be released, so nuclear reactors, sites of nuclear detonations, the cores of stars, and the like were commonplace, but there were different ways that such energy could be released. Suffering was one. Love was another. The girl in the void had seen centuries of lovers, centuries of hatred. Murders, families born and killed, and, unexpectedly, Alex.

"So you saw me through one of these windows? It was me, on this night, on Edwards Island? Are you sure? I've definitely expended a good amount of energy tonight, but nothing nearing the level of, like, a nuclear bomb."

"Well, it was... strange. I saw you born, first of all. I see a lot of births; people tend to feel quite strongly about those kinds of things, but yours was different, seeing as I could explicitly track you through time. I can't do that with most. I tracked you off and on throughout life, but not from any window that you made of your own volition, just ones that were already there to begin with. And then, when you came to Edwards, the picture got a lot more clear, because of the time loop and whatnot. Over the course of a couple hundred, or maybe thousand, loops, the energy you were expending over the course of the night started to add up, and it eventually tore a hole in reality that you could be brought into this place through."

"And so you brought me here," Alex asked. "I appreciate the gesture, I guess, but... not really, actually. I'd kind of like you to just let me go, to be honest."

"No," the voice explained, "I didn't bring you into the cycle, at least; that was definitely the sunken. I might've brought you to the island, in a strange way. It'll make more sense once you get here, I promise."

"And how is that?"

"I've carved out a space in the void, surrounded by a protective barrier that keeps out the things I don't want in here. Like the sunken. It'll tear down the barriers they've put up in your mind, the ones that stop you from remembering the truth. The whole truth. You had a conversation with them, a few cycles back, and the whole situation will make more sense when you get in here and can fully remember it."

"So, if the ghosts - the sunken, as you call them - can put up barriers that stop me from remembering that I'm stuck in a loop, why can I remember bits and pieces of past lives? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to not let me remember anything, and just hope I make a mistake on one of the go-rounds?"

"They're really nothing more than children, given power over life, death, and time. They aren't _good_ at the things they do, they're just _marginally_ better at making the block than you and your friends are at sniffing it out-"

She was cut off when Alex bumped headfirst into some sort of barrier. It responded to her touch less like a wall, and more like Jello. "Am I here?"

"Yeah, but it senses the sunken on you. You're going to have to take this slowly, one piece of you at a time, or it'll just bounce you right back out. And, fair warning, it'll probably give you a _killer_ headache, so just be ready for that. Go in left arm first, then left leg, and ease your whole body through slowly and carefully like that. If it feels unnatural, that's because the human body was never supposed to be able to do this."

"Well, that sure is comforting," Alex muttered, but she did as the voice told her. The barrier was an odd kind of slimy membrane, sticking to Alex's skin as soon as her fingers made contact with it, but it _did_ make way for her, if she went at it slowly and carefully enough. The hardest part was getting her head through; the barrier held on to it far more tightly than it had held onto the rest of her, and, on top of choking the breath out of her, it also felt as if it was tearing a part of her brain out of her skull, but she gritted her teeth and forced through it, popping out the other side into a facade of a coffee shop. The shop was mostly empty, minus one guest sitting at a table central to the room, her face hidden behind a newspaper. Alex walked up to the table, pulled out a chair, and started up a chat. "Didn't know they deliver copies of the New York Times to the void," she jested.

The response was a melancholy sigh. "Only the issues I remember reading from before I got here," the woman explained, folding the paper up. "That's how this place works, you know, for those who've gotten pulled into it. Anything you can remember, you can make."

"That's neat and all, but I do believe I was promised answers," Alex protested. "The first question I want an answer to is, who are you?"

"Rack your memory, kid. You saw me earlier tonight."

Alex darted through her memories, trying to place the woman. Her hair was a shockingly light hue, seemingly not content with just being blonde, it was verging on whiteness. It was hard to tell physical characteristics when she was seated, but it was clear that her host was fairly short. Her eyes were incredibly blue, as if a piece had been scraped out of the sky and formed into two irises. "I'm gonna be honest, I don't remember seeing you. Sorry, bud."

"Think harder. I was mute, if that's any hint."

"Mute? Oh, you're the one that I saw in that weird, dreamlike state in the first time loop, aren't you?"

"Bingo."

"Who was the girl you showed me in the void? I saw her in the mirror, just before seeing Nona."

"Also me."

"So... you're-you _were_ a resident of Edwards Island? When did you live on the island, and how did you get drawn into the void?"

The woman rolled her eyes. "For someone who's supposed to be Maggie's parallel, you sure are slow to catch on to things. The inquisitive side is there, but..."

Alex was indignant. "I'll have you know that-"

"And I'll have _you_ know that _I_ don't particularly _care_ what you'll have me know," the woman said, rolling Alex's words into her point. She diffused the blue-haired girl's comeback with an I-don't-care shrug, and continued, "I'm sorry, I really don't mean to antagonize you; I truly hope we can have a mutually beneficial relationship, and I'll get around to answering your questions, but, quite frankly, they're trivial, and can wait. Before I give you any solid answers, I have a hypothesis that I need to test. Would that be alright?"

Alex wasn't happy with her patronizing tone and attitude, but figured that she didn't have much of a choice but to play along. The woman had made her position on giving up her information very clear, and so long as she wasn't forced to undergo any physical harm, or bring any to her friends, she didn't really mind contributing to her experiments.

The way that the woman continued as soon as Alex relented suggested that the girl's response to the question hadn't really mattered, though. "I _thought_ that forcing you through my bubble would remove the block on your memory, but you're not _obviously_ remembering anything earlier than the current cycle, at least not that you didn't already know. So we're going to try and test this a different way; I'll say key points of interest from previous cycles, and you'll tell me if you experience any psychological response akin to memory in response to these triggers. Alright?"

"I can do that," Alex agreed.

"Thank you. I promise, I'll try and get this over with quickly, and then we'll get to the information you really want to know. Are you ready?"

Alex shrugged.

"I'll take that as a yes. Let's begin. The Adler library, two cups of hot tea, quiet discussion."

The woman looked at Alex expectantly, which made Alex feel uncomfortable. She'd been put on the spot, and was entirely unprepared to answer the question. "Um," she stuttered, "I... I don't know... I'm not... actually, it does strike a chord. Not so much anything having to do with the scenario you're describing, but there's... there's a picture, playing in my mind. A fire crackling, the tide roaring up behind me, the taste of shitty, cheap beer, and... and Nona."

"Interesting," the woman muttered. "So you _don't_ remember talking to Clarissa, then? Well, I suppose it makes sense that you'd associate _that_ memory with the talk, as well; she was giving you her blessing to date Nona, you know."

Alex's cheeks heated up a little, although it was hard to tell, given her natural skin tone. "I see," she said.

"Well, that answers more of my inquiry than I thought it would. The memories _are_ there, just not immediately popping out, and they appear to be associated more closely with their emotional impacts than the literal, logical occurrence of events. All of this makes sense enough, I suppose."

"So, are you done?"

"No, but I imagine I'll get this opportunity again, more than once, so go ahead and ask your questions."

"Thanks. First of all, who are you? And I mean, like, name and stuff, not just the cryptic information you were trying to use to lead me down a rabbit hole earlier."

"My name is Anna. Anna Shea, if it makes a difference. I lived on Edwards with Margaret Adler, and was drawn into the void when I attempted to make contact with the crew of the USS Kanaloa, who I call the sunken, on my own. They used an image of Maggie in a mirror to deceive me, in order to draw me close enough to a temporal tear that they could attempt to latch onto me and pull themselves out of the void. They were unsuccessful, and instead pulled me into the void. It's been roughly sixty years, and, if I've kept an accurate tab on the world, Maggie is now dead."

"So, you were Maggie Adler's friend, that she spent so much time trying to help. I guess that makes sense. How close were you and Maggie?"

"I'm not sure if you remember, but two cycles ago, the sunken showed you the entire lifespan of the universe, how it ends and begins anew. Edwards Island is a microcosm of the universe in this way. Maggie is a microcosm of the Edwards Island microcosm. You are this generation's iteration of Maggie Adler. I was to Maggie as Nona is to you."

Alex cackled. "I _knew_ you two weren't straight! Jonas owes me $5!"

"I'm glad I could be of assistance," Anna said bemusedly, covering a laugh with her hand.

"Alright, next question. Why have you taken so much interest in me and my life?"

Anna sighed. "At first it was a sick attachment to Maggie, still. The two of you are similar in so many ways; the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you love, the way you hurt. But I realized quickly that stalking you around your whole life just because I was heartsick was ethically wrong on many levels, so I stopped doing that. I came back to you, though, when your relationship with Michael created an intimate connection between you and the island. Those who are close to this island lead interesting lives. And now, I have hope that you can finally let me, and the sunken, out of here. There's a way, hypothetically, but it still needs more testing."

"You think there's a way to let you all out of here?"

"Certainly. It's not as if we can't leave at all - we can communicate effectively enough via radio waves - we just need a strong conduit to propel us from the void into the real world, where we can pass on to the next life, just like any other deceased souls. Then, the sunken will be able to move on properly, and, if there is an afterlife, I will be with Maggie again."

"And how would this work?"

"There's no guarantee that it _would_ work, you see. It's all just hypothesis. The mathematics of the current situation backs up the hypothesis pretty strongly; I have thousands of sheets of calculations to prove it, but the math, the formulas, the calculations and whatnot are all in the level of theory. Putting the theory into practice is where it meets its flaws."

"That... doesn't really answer my question."

"Well, first of all, you'd have to be fully conscious of the cycle, the whole time, because I can't communicate with you until this part of the cycle, and it's obviously too late to send you back out onto the island now. Thus, the experiments with removing your mental block. Then, you'd need to combine the energies that best tear holes in the fabric of space and time, i.e., love, pain, radio waves, and a nuclear explosion, in order to create a large enough portal to facilitate full, unhindered transportation from the void into the world, which would hopefully entice the poor souls stuck in this place to leave of their own accord. Once the sunken are gone, you should be released to live your normal life again, or whatever the closest thing to normal you can muster is after all of this."

"Wait a minute, this plan will also get me out of here? Along with all of my friends?"

"Maybe a living Michael, too, depending on how well we time it."

"What do I need to do?"

"You and Nona's full cooperation would be needed to fulfill the love criteria, and someone to experience immense emotional or psychological suffering for the other emotion. I'm not sure who would be the best candidate to fulfill that role. Then, you'd need to tinker at the Harden Tower until it was functional again."

"What about the nuclear explosion part? I hear that it's pretty hard to come across that kind of thing."

"Oh, not really. I shit you not, given that the other three forces are acting strongly enough, you could turn on Maggie's _microwave_ for fifteen minutes and get enough radiation to open a portal. Or, the plutonium from the Kanaloa had a half-life of a couple thousand years; if we could find a way to safely retrieve any of it from the ocean floor, it'd certainly do the trick."

"And I would just have to turn the tower on? And get Ren or someone really sad? And, like, kiss my girlfriend? That can't be it, can it? There's got to be a more precise method to ripping the fabric of time and space apart, right?"

"Oh, there most certainly is. This'll take quite a few attempts to even verify the applicability of."

"We might as well get started now," Alex said, ready to go.

Anna laughed. "Not so quick, Alex. I appreciate your eagerness to help me out of here, but I've been here for sixty years. I'm patient. We're going to have to drill you, time and time again, to make sure that you remember every word I tell you. Right now, you remember nothing. So we're not even on the first step here."

"Reset me," Alex said with a determined voice and a steely glint in her eye.

"Pardon?"

"You heard me. Reset me. If we need to drill me over and over again until I finally remember the cycle and I finally remember your instructions, we should start right now. You might be patient, but I'm not. I've got a life to live; this night is, all in all, not that bad for me, at least in terms of me gaining friends and a girlfriend, and it's a _real_ killjoy that I don't get to enjoy any of that. So I'm ready to start over completely, over and over again, until I get you out of here. Until I get the sunken out of here, until I get my friends out of here, and until I get myself out of here."

Anna grinned. She'd had her doubts about Alex, but they were appearing to be unfounded. "I like your style," she said.

* * *

"It used to be a military base."


	4. Chapter 4

"So," Nona began, dangling her legs off the edge of the pier. She left it as an open-ended invitation; a statement saying something along the lines of 'well, you brought me here, are we really just going to sit here in silence?'.

"So," Alex replied, acknowledging the social contract she'd signed, and admitting that she didn't really have a good way to fulfill it, all in a single word. Luckily, Nona was a good sport about it. The two sat for a while longer while Alex gathered her thoughts. Nona was probably thinking that it was incredible that, in all the time it had taken the two to scale the cliffs, get over the fence, and through the town without tripping any alarms, Alex hadn't been bursting at the seams as soon as the pair got to what she'd deemed to be a 'safe' location to talk to Nona. But, Alex thought, that was just the way she was now. It's six cycles in a row that she remembered completely now, and things like thoughts and words are difficult to piece together when thousands of PTSD-associated images are running through her mind, thousands of panicked thoughts all vying for attention at the top level of her brain's function. No easier, Alex knew that in a couple of hours or so, another thousand pictures of her loved ones horribly mutilated, another million screamed thoughts that she'd never voiced, _would never voice_ , would be thrown onto the top of the pile. It was this line of thought, or unthought, that brought her to what she'd meant to say in the first place. Alex cleared her dry throat awkwardly, and tried to start. "I..." She couldn't finish it. Nona had tilted her head in _just_ the way that she always did, the way that took Alex's breath away every single time, and she hesitated.

Nona filled in the blank air with her voice. "You?"

"I- never mind. It's not really that important," Alex sighed. She'd chickened out, just like she always chickened out. At the first sign of some resistance, her instinct was always to cave. It was a bad mantra to live by. Especially when that mantra extends to your brother's face slipping beneath the calm, blue surface of the lake that you'd only agreed to go to because you thought it'd be more work to fight his will than just to _show_ him that you really couldn't swim. She stood up, turned around, and tried to leave, but a small hand caught the cuff of her coat silently. She looked back involuntarily.

"I don't believe that," Nona said cautiously, measuring every word. "You're many things, Alex, but you're not an exercise enthusiast. I know you didn't walk all that way, climb _that much_ , just for the fun of it. I don't know what's weighing on your mind so heavily that you'd bring me all the way out here, only to walk away, but I want you to know that you can share it with me. Whatever it is."

"It's really not anything important," Alex insisted. She avoided Nona's eye, though; her voice was bulletproof, but her eyes belied the pleading need for someone, _anyone_ , to listen and share the burden of her already-fucked-up head when she was forced to do nothing but _live with it_ , through _one night_ , for _all eternity_.

Nona furrowed her brow slightly, her mouth ever-so-slightly curving down in a semicircle of concern. Her voice lost the guarded tone that she approached most conversations with, quietly asking, "Please, Alex. I know I don't really know you, but I'd like to, and you clearly have something you need to say. If you won't say it to me, at least promise me that you'll say it to somebody."

Something inside Alex gave way. The barrier behind her eyes, the one that had kept them just stinging, and not rushing, was lifted. As the first few tears formed at the corners of Alex's eyes, she had an option: break down _here_ , or break down somewhere else. She gave bolting a long, hard thought, but decided against it. She set herself slowly down on the ground, unconsciously pulling her legs into her torso with hands hidden by the ends of her jacket's sleeves, and her mind went elsewhere as she started to sob.

It really wasn't fair. Nothing about this island, this night, this cycle of events, even remotely resembled the enigmatic ideal of _fair_. The night was livable on its own, but when you factored in every time a passing ghost giggled childishly in the corner of her ear, and just how badly it frayed her mind every time they did, it became a little less so. When you considered the emotional weight of watching Michael die, live, and die again, over and over and _over_ , it became a little less so. When you added in the fact that her body never once got a _break_ ; the physical exhaustion peeling back the muscles of her arms and scratching off the tendons of her legs, it became a little less so. When you calculated that, even when she wasn't physically moving, that was usually just because the ghosts had found some new psychological torture that they wanted to immediately shove in Alex's face, just because they could, it became a little less so. Throw in the natural psychological response of being forced to be awake for six days straight, and you'd realize that all of those little factors, and many, _many_ more that she couldn't even _think of right now_ , and you begin to realize just how perfectly tailored the supernatural forces had made Alex's own personal hell.

Outside of Alex's psyche, the already-torn jeans she wore frayed even further under the weight of her tears. In between flashes of Ren shattered on the rocky shores of this godforsaken place and Clarissa falling to her death, Alex began to realize that her tears were no longer reaching the spots on her knees that had been so used to receiving them. And, in just the kind of inexplicable fashion that all meltdowns are seemingly destined to end, Alex was shaken out of her moderate mental breakdown by the question of where her tears were falling. She calmed her breathing until the world was visible through holes a bit wider than pinpricks, and blinked away the more obnoxious tears clouding her vision, she was surprised to see the end of an orange sleeve below her eyes. She traced the arm back, from the cuff to the shoulder, and saw that its owner was the girl she'd brought out here in the first place. Obvious in hindsight, but it was truly incredible how mental and physical fatigue can break down one's ability to deduce such things. It was easy to understand that Nona had decided to try and provide some sort of comfort to Alex in her time of need, but what was not so easily derived was why _both_ of Nona's arms were wrapped around her. Perhaps Alex would remember something to explain that point a while later. Right now she had neither the energy nor the time, because Nona realized that the girl was no longer in a state of total meltdown.

"Hey," Nona whispered.

"Hey," Alex croaked back. Her vocal chords were too shot from the louder aspects of crying to attempt a whisper.

"Do you want to talk?"

"Yeah." Yeah, she really did. There was a reason Alex had brought Nona up here, and she was right, it wasn't just because Alex was an exercise enthusiast. She hadn't realized just how _badly_ she'd wanted, no, _needed_ to talk to Nona, though, until right now, in this exact moment, with her eyes still stinging fresh tears and her breathing still hitched with the hiccups and heaves that came with her sobs. But she also realized that she had a certain responsibility to _protect_ Nona. This night was a mess, a real fucking house of horrors, but they still had some time that could be considered _normal_ , a few short hours of happiness on the beach. She didn't want to take that completely away from Nona. "I... I do want to talk," she spoke, voicing her thoughts in a way to break the awkward silence, "but I just don't know about how much. Because I know some stuff, and it's... it's pretty rough, and it broke me - it's still breaking me every second - and I don't want you to throw all of it on you like a huge emotional burden."

"I don't mind," Nona protested meekly.

"You what?"

"I don't mind," she repeated. "For real. If it's tearing you apart like this, then you clearly need to voice it. I don't want to be pushy, but I want to be someone who can be there for you when you need someone to talk to. So, seriously, just spew this shit out. It's fine."

"I- are you sure? Like, absolutely sure? Because this is... this is a _whole_ thing, okay? Like, a real night-ruiner type of thing."

Nona nodded her head vigorously. "I mean it, dude. Just let loose."

Alex made an awkward noise, halfway between a sigh and a groan, and looked out over the ocean, very intentionally angling her head away from Nona, so that she wouldn't feel so guilty for dropping the bombshell. "This night is going to go horribly wrong. It already has _gone_ horribly wrong, it is _going_ horribly wrong, it will _go_ horribly wrong. We'll go back to the beach, and play truth-or-slap, because that's apparently something that's just unavoidable, and then I'll go down to the caves with Ren and Jonas, and you'll stay behind because you always stay behind, and Jonas will run off after some weird light he sees in a cavern way deeper than I was planning to go, and I'll release someone. Some _thing_. And then reality starts to get all weird, because I just pulled the plug on the drain of a couple of decades of festering anger at everyone in the entire world, and we're in the bottom of the sink. And then I'm running, always running, for hours trying to put the pieces back together, and I can't, and I have to go down into _their_ world, and the whole plan falls apart, and I shut the void with myself still in it, and then... and then I start over. And I do it all again."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Nona said. "Hold your horses there, bud. I caught, like, _none_ of that. Slow down, take a deep breath, and start again, okay? We've got all the time in the world."

Alex laughed a dry laugh. She had no idea just how much time they really had; simultaneously an infinite amount and none at all. "Yeah. Okay. So, this island is hella haunted. It all started back in the 1950's, or at least that's where I _think_ it started. Anyway, I don't think it matters that much; point is that there's angry ghosts whose lives were taken from them before they'd really gotten the chance to live, and they want to try and fix that by taking our lives away from us. And when I go into the cave with Jonas, I let them out of the weird non-place where they've been chilling out for the past fifty years, and they chase us around the island for the rest of the night, and it's physically exhausting and not any better from a mental or emotional standpoint. And, after the whole exhausting night, everything else we try fails, so Jonas and I have to go back down into the caves to try and shut the portal that they came through, but Jonas gets taken away by... something, and it's just me. And then I have words with them, and they're never the same, but they're never a wholesome experience. And then it starts all over."

"It starts over?"

"The night. I snap back to the moment that the ferry leaves the shore, and then the whole night happens again, the exact same way."

"So... you've lived through this night how many times, now?"

"Six. This is the seventh that I'm aware of, but I'm sure I've done it more. It's back-to-back, too. There's absolutely no downtime, just rushing through the night, again and again, with all the exhaustion and the angst that comes with it." Alex was silent, having said her piece. Nona was right, it made a big difference to say it out loud. The two sat for quite some time, watching the last few rays of sun die over the horizon, listening to the sounds of the ocean and the life that came with it.

"Well, then, if you know exactly what causes the whole thing to happen, why can't you just not go," Nona asked after a while. "Not go to the cave? Not release the ghosts? Not start this night all over again?"

"I've tried that," Alex explained. "It doesn't work. I just black out while they autopilot me the whole way there. And they save the worst they can do to me for instances like that, where I try to throw off the cycle so obviously. The things they showed me when I tried to just not start this whole mess..." She trailed off, in another world.

"What were they?"

Alex took a deep breath. "You."

She'd expected Nona to look quizzical, but the girl instead adopted a guarded expression, her mouth tightening just barely at the edges, her brow furrowing a little, and her eyes squinting slightly. "Me," she parroted, in a voice that seemed midway between 'verify that I heard you right' and 'explain yourself'.

"Yes. You. In various states of torture, sometimes dead outright."

"And... how exactly is _that_ the worst thing they show you?"

"Are you going to make me spell it out for you?"

Nona chuckled. "Is it bad for me to admit that I really want to hear you say it?"

Alex snapped to face her. She hadn't expected that. Caught off guard, she sputtered,q "I... you... you want to hear me say... that I really, like, _like_ you?"

"Close enough," Nona teased.

Alex breathed a massive sigh of relief, then caught herself. "Wait, what did you want me to say?"

"Relax," Nona assured. "I was teasing." She turned away from Alex to hide her blush, fixating on the reflection of the moon in the waves. After a moment of just sitting there, she said, "Do you mean that? I mean, _really_ mean it?"

"Yeah, of course I mean it. You're... you're incredible, Nona. You're the reason I've kept myself going through this night over and over again, because I have this little, tiny hope that maybe one day we can get out of here. Together."

"I don't know what to say," she admitted. "Is... is this usually what happens? Do we always...?"

"No," Alex admitted. "Not that I can remember."

* * *

"Alex, Alex, Alex. I'll admit, I'm disappointed. We were doing so well, and then you had to go and forget everything. Hell, you wiped yourself _completely clean_ , so that I had to _struggle_ to hunt you back down. Do me a favor and don't make me do that again; it's really not an enjoyable process, to swipe through every single moment in the history of every single universe until I find the one with you in it."

Alex flopped her head slowly to the left, and then the right. She blinked several times, trying to remove the blackness from her vision, but was unsuccessful. She sat up, alarmed, but was knocked immediately back to the ground by the pounding of her head. Stars flooded her eyes, and she was suddenly aware of the sound of blood rushing through her ears. "Holy shit," she whispered. The words rang like gunshots.

"Sorry about that. Small side effect of dragging you through three dimensions to get you here. Don't worry about the blackness, you can see just fine; that's just the way it is here. The headache won't last too long, hopefully. We have business that we need to get down to."

Alex groaned. The groan was too loud, and another ice pick slammed into the top of her eyeball, eliciting a little whimper.

The disembodied voice sighed. "You aren't going to be ready to go any time soon, are you?"

Slowly, _very_ slowly, Alex shook her head no.

"Fine. I can try to help, if you want. But, fair warning, you'll probably hate it."

"Just do it," she whispered.

"Alright. If your eyes are open, shut them."

Alex didn't listen, and immediately regretted it, as she was suddenly under a bright, white, clinical light. "Fuck!"

"Warned you," the voice muttered. Now that Alex had some tangible sense of direction, she could place the voice in the room and turn toward it. Peeking through the tiniest slits in her eyelids, she made out the form of a short blonde woman. She looked familiar, but Alex couldn't exactly place where from, either because of the fact that feeling her heartbeat in her frontal lobe hampered her mental prowess, or some other reason, likely one intimately linked with Edwards. She was still trying to work out this conundrum when a warm brown cup was pressed in one hand, two white pills in the other. "Drink up," the woman said. "And take those. It won't fix it right away, but it's the best damned migraine remedy I've found in the sixty-odd years I've been here."

Alex complied, and almost immediately felt the tension in her back relieved. She hadn't even known that it was there. "Whoa," she whispered, as the stars in her vision disappeared, one by one. "Where'd you get this?"

"My father was a pharmacist, he liked to mess around with medicines, and one day he found this. I don't really know what's in it." The woman turned back toward the cupboards she'd taken the cup and drink from, and fished out a teapot and a cup. Alex watched, sipping at her own drink silently, as the woman poured tea from the kettle, no brewing required.

"Nice party trick," she commented. "How'd you do it?"

"That's the way things work around here. You just remember things from our reality, and then they occur here. I told you that the last time you were here. Remember it?"

"No," Alex admitted, "but you seem... familiar, at least."

"That's better than I was expecting, frankly. Well, to recap, I'm Anna. Anna Shea. Maggie's old friend, lover, whatever you want to call me. You're in the void right now, because I dragged you here, and you're stuck in the time loop hell that we call Edwards Island. I pulled you out of it in the middle this time, as opposed to my usual strategy of waiting for you to finish up the night, because when I wait for you, you always forget. So I'll insert you right back in the middle, and we'll see how well that memory holds up."

"What do I need to remember? I don't know what's going on, remember?"

"Sure. You need to remember a lot of things, but, for now, we're going to start small." Anna snapped her fingers, Alex winced at the noise, and a green chalkboard popped into existence. Anna drew a diagram of a radio, an FM dial, tuned to 140.3, and quickly sketched a rough map of Edwards Island, drawing a large X on the outskirts of the campgrounds on the west side of the island, in less than a minute.

"Wow, that was fast," Alex mused. "How long have you been working on that skill?"

Anna glared, cold enough to shut Alex right up. "Keep on task, kid. I've waited a long time to _get out_ of here, not for your _wit_."

"Jeez, sorry," she muttered.

Anna pointed to the radio. "This is called a Wave-Assisted-Lock radio. Ren will mention it at Harden Tower, you'll head down to Main Street with either Ren, Jonas, or Nona, and you'll pick one up. That's the guaranteed part, I trust you remember?"

Alex nodded her head.

"Good. Now, we need to break from the pattern, because it's not doing any good for either of us, let alone your friends. So, you're going to take Nona with you, because of course you are, and you're going to pick up the radio, just like normal, okay?"

"Yes," Alex said.

"Just making absolutely sure that you remember this, take _Nona_ and get the _radio_."

"Didn't you, like, _just_ snap at me for wasting time? If every second is so crucial to you, maybe don't spend them treating me like a little kid and just get on with it," Alex snapped, starting to get frustrated.

Anna grinned. "That's the spirit!"

Alex glared.

"Alright, alright, I'll just tell you what you need to do. Get the radio-"

Alex cleared her throat, deepening her glare. Anna laughed.

"Then, instead of going back up to Harden, through Epiphany Fields, like you usually do, you need to go through the closed-off tunnel, so that you don't get split up from Nona too early. Convince her to come with you; it shouldn't take much effort, if I've read the current state of your relationship the right way. Then, the two of you need to loop around the beaches and head up to the campgrounds. Remember the pile of rocks, the one directly up the mountain from your first time loop? Not where you find Nona, the other one."

"Directly above the abandoned tent? I always thought that those rocks looked fishy," Alex muttered.

"Yeah, those ones. You need to go there, both you and Nona, and tune to 140.3, until you hear my voice again. Careful not to tune any lower, or you'll hear Maggie's transmission, and might think it's me. If you _do_ accidentally tune into hers, make sure not to miss mine, just above it. I'll relay more information then."

"What will this information be about?"

"Oh yeah, I forgot, you forgot that. Ideally, how we can all get out of this mess, you with your life."

* * *

Anna was wrong. Very wrong.

"I am _not_ going into that _creepy ass tunnel_ when there are _actual fucking ghosts on the loose_ , Alex!"

"Nona," Alex pleaded, "trust me, please. This might be the only way any of us have to really get out of here."

"Oh, so this tunnel is just gonna open up on the other side and it's gonna be all _sunshine and rainbows_ , and none of us will ever have to look at a ghost again? I don't particularly think so, Alex."

"No, Nona, I swear I have a plan for this."

"Oh yeah? And just what is that plan, that's so ingenious that you're going to get me to go in this claustrophobic little hellhole just to humor you?"

"We have to go back to the campgrounds on the west side of the island so that we can tune into a friend's frequency for information on how we can get out of here, but we can't go back through the fields, or we'll run into Jonas and Ren, and we'll get split back up."

"Who exactly is this friend of yours? Because I'm personally doubting that they're a super legit friend, if they're trying to force me to go through this," Nona gestured toward the dark tunnel. Just at that moment, the light in the tunnel flickered, and Nona gestured even more wildly. " _See?_ This is _exactly_ what I mean! That was literally _straight_ out of a horror movie, Alex!"

"I... I met her in the void. Her name is Anna Shea, she was Maggie Adler's old lover, who vanished in the 1950s. She said she has a way to get us out of here."

Nona laughed dryly. "Alex, sweetheart, have you _never_ heard of how ghosts work? That's, like, _textbook_ ghost behavior right there."

Alex sighed. "Nona, please, you have to believe me. I get why you don't want to do this. I'm scared too, and I'm tired too, and I've got a pounding headache on top of it all, and any other time I'd agree with you that going through this tunnel is probably not one of my best ideas, but this... this isn't _normal_ , Nona. I've done this night over and over again, and nothing much changes, but this is completely out of the norm. I can't just let this go; it could be my ticket out of this mess. _Our_ ticket."

Nona was still unconvinced. "Alex, when I say that going through this tunnel is the worst idea anyone's ever had, I don't mean it's the _literal worst_ , but... it's pretty close. Please, let's just go back up to the tower, and meet up with Ren and Jonas, and decide the best course of action from there? Okay?"

"Look, you don't have to come with me," Alex conceded. "No one's saying that I'm going to, like, make you or anything. But if we go back into that field, then the end of the night is a fixed point: Jonas and I will go down into the caves, and I'll shut them off, and then the whole night starts over. This is the _last place_ that I know we can get off the one-way street. So, whether you come with me or not, _I'm_ going through the tunnel, and try to contact Anna."

It was Nona's turn to sigh. She asked, "You're really serious about this, aren't you?"

"One hundred percent," Alex responded.

The orange-sweatered girl pinched the bridge of her nose and looked intensely at the inside of her wrist. After a moment, she said exasperatedly, "God... I'll go with you, but you owe me for this."

Alex's face lit up in a small smile. "Thanks," she breathed. "I would've gone either way, but it means a lot that you'll come with me."

"Hey, that's what I'm supposed to be here for, right?" Alex shrugged, assuming the question to be rhetorical. It was not. "No, seriously, is that what I'm supposed to do? I've never been in a relationship," she admitted, before hastily correcting, "or whatever this is, that we are right now. So... is this what I'm supposed to do?"

The teal-haired girl thought about it for a minute. It was tempting to simply say 'yes', but she'd hate to be manipulative. "Well, not really. There's nothing you're, like, _obliged_ to do, you know? Just... the two of us, if we're dating, if you're comfortable calling it that, we should just spend time together, and try to be there for each other, you know?"

"Oh," Nona said. "Okay. I thought it was harder than that."

Alex laughed. "Oh," she assured, "it won't be easy. I'm not an easy person to get along with anyway, let alone now that I can snap awake at midnight in a cold sweat every time I dream that I'm back on Edwards."

"We're in the same boat on that one, you know."

"I suppose. But that's not the point."

"I get that we weren't, like, super close before tonight, but you seem like a good person. A little high-strung sometimes, maybe. A little snappy, sure. You don't always make the best decisions, in my opinion-"

Alex interjected, "You're just mad about the tunnel."

"Touche. But, the point is that you're still a good person. You've got the best interests of the people close to you at heart, and as long as I'm close to you, that's all that matters. Besides, whatever you can throw at me, I guarantee you I've been worse."

"I don't know about that," Alex cautioned. "You haven't seen me when..." Alex gulped. It'd been nearly a year, but it still wasn't fun to talk about. "When Michael died. I was... a broken mess, as Ren would testify, and I took it out on everyone around me. And... most people didn't stick around. Rightfully so, I treated them like total shit for, like, _months_ while I wallowed in my own self-pity. I'm better now, but I'm always terrified that I'll do it again. Lash out like that, make everybody who cares not want to stick around, all because I can't deal with stress and-" Alex's tone was getting more and more frantic, although she didn't notice. Nona did, and, recognizing it as the symptom of a panic attack, interlaced the fingers of her left hand with Alex's right, gently interrupting the teal-headed track star.

"Hey," she said softly. "It's alright. It's in the past. If you really think that you handled it so badly, then you can learn from it. You reacted how you reacted to Michael's death, and that's okay. He was your rock, and you suddenly lost him. I understand. When my grandpa died, I was the same way. I didn't eat, I didn't sleep, I didn't talk to anyone, and when I did it was only because I needed something or because I was angry. But you have to try to see the bright side of things. Sure, you lost a lot of friends, so did I. But we found out who our true friends really were."

* * *

Alex's arms were trembling as she hauled herself over the last ledge, and she didn't know why. Sure, she felt like she'd ran a few marathons today, done about a million push-ups, and core work to boot, but she'd felt like that the entire night, and it hadn't physically affected her before. Maybe it was the stress, or just plain insanity of it all, getting to her again? She didn't feel like someone was crushing her chest from all sides, so she doubted _that_. Or maybe... maybe it had something to do with the ghosts' presence in this particular place? It would make sense, if Anna had found a way to punch into the real world at this exact spot, and Maggie had left a radio note here, _and_ the ghosts had been able to make a time loop at the campsite just below, that this place would have some additional energy, or whatever, and that Alex might pick up on that.

"Huh," Nona said to herself. Alex cocked an eyebrow, and she continued. "You know, a minute ago I felt just fine, but now... there's something off about this place. My legs are turning to jello, like whenever I first woke up, at those rocks over there, and talked to the not-you."

"Those rocks right over there," Alex verified, pointing east to the next hill.

"Yeah," Nona said.

"Hm, come to think of it, yeah. I feel just the same as the first time I was in the time loop down there," Alex muttered, pondering their situation. "Are we... Nona, have we done this before?"

"I don't _think_ I've been up here," she said, "but I guess we wouldn't really know, would we? That's, like, kinda the point."

"I guess," Alex agreed. "Just let me know if you see any weird, old, music box things. I usually end up messing with those; I think it makes the ghosts happy."

"Is that really that much better than an angry ghost?"

Alex shrugged. "Gotta remain positive, right?"

"Touche. Didn't we come up here so you could, like, make bad decisions and talk to ghosts, or something?"

"Leave me alone," Alex laughed. She considered just _not_ using the radio, in an act of jestful spite, but decided she'd rather get off the island than mess with her whatever-Nona-was-to-her (they really needed to get that officially named). There was plenty of time for poking fun later. As the blue-haired girl pulled out her radio, she decided to knock out two birds with one stone, though. "Hey, Nona?"

"Yeah?"

"What are we? I mean, like, _us_ , you know? What do you want to call us, I mean?"

"Do you mean, like, us together? As a relationship, or whatever?"

"Yeah. Like, not how we were before tonight, when we never talked, but how we are now that we've got shared trauma and you follow me through creepy dark tunnels just to make me happy. Are we, like, dating? Or something?"

Nona winced a little bit. "I... I don't think I want to say that we're dating," she cautioned.

"Oh," Alex said. "Okay. My bad, I misinterpreted this whole thing, I guess."

"No, no, no," Nona urged, "you totally didn't. I'm, like, 100% into you, and I'd totally be down to go on a date after this is all over. It's just, my parents are the world's biggest homophobes and they'd, like, kick me out of the house, so I'm a little hesitant to put that kind of label on it, you know?" Before Alex could respond, a dazed, faraway look crossed Nona's face. "I feel like I already told you that. Did I mention that earlier?"

"I didn't think so," Alex responded, not entirely sure herself, "but, actually, now that you mention it, it feels familiar. Are we in a damn time loop? Usually I'm aware of these things."

"No, I don't think so. It... it's definitely a memory, or a deja vu thing, or whatever, but it's _old_... like, _really_ old. You know how you get that weird surreal kind of feeling around memories from more than a couple months back? It's like that. But..."

"But we weren't in this situation a couple of months ago," Alex finished. "Or, at least, you don't _think_ we were."

"Precisely."

The two sat in the shocked silence that follows a large revelation for a minute, before Alex said, "Well, I believe your instinct. If it's accurate, then we've been here for a long time. A lot longer than I thought we had."

"Yeah. I'm feeling kinda disoriented right now," Nona admitted, "and this vertigo is making me think that maybe going through that tunnel to try and find a way out of here wasn't that bad an idea."

Alex reached gently to Nona's hand, locking fingers and giving it a tight squeeze. "Hey, it's okay, we'll be out of here soon enough," she said. 'Hey, it's okay, the next time around you won't remember this,' she thought.

"Hopefully," Nona said defeatedly, "but if we've really been here that long, there's no way this is the first time we've tried this, right? It's totally happened before, and it's totally failed before, and we're totally stuck here for all of eternity with some demented ghosts." She exhaled, long, deep, and shaky, and said, "God, I feel sorry for you. I don't know if it'd be better to remember or not to remember. I'll try to remember for next time, so that maybe we can get something good out of this, or at least you won't just go completely crazy having the same conversations with me over and over again for all of eternity."

"Hey," Alex objected, but it was halfhearted.

Nona responded before Alex could really speak, "For now, just turn the dial. Maybe something will happen, who knows."

Alex did as she was told, but didn't stop thinking. She wasn't so sure that she'd tell Nona everything that had happened on the next loop. If this happened every time she knew, this hard crash, then was it really worth it? Sure, having Nona to talk to had probably saved Alex's life no less than once on this loop. Sure, watching Nona walking with Ren felt like razor blades blowing through her heart, but it was better than watching Nona go through this right now, right?

Alex was removed from her thoughts by the crackling of the radio.

"H-hello? Hello? Is somebody there? Alex and Nona? You two are there?"

Nona's face lit up. "I didn't expect that to work," she whispered. She giggled a few times. "Yes! Anna! We're here, Anna!" There was no response from the radio, and Nona's face started to tire once more. The corner of her mouth drooped a bit, and she said, "Oh well. It was worth a sho-"

She was cut off by the radio popping to life at the last moment. "Okay, so I know someone tuned in, and I'm assuming it's you two, Alex and Nona, but I can't hear you or see you at the rocks, so I don't know for sure. Can you, like, move some rocks around or something? I'll be able to see that, and then I can relay instructions."

Alex threw the radio at Nona, who barely caught it in time, on account of being caught off guard, and kicked three rocks off the cliff face. She hissed as she felt something in her toe pop, and heard Nona stifle a laugh behind her. "Maybe don't hit the pile of rocks next time," Nona suggested as Alex bounced around on one foot, holding her other in her hand.

"Thanks for the advice, Einstein," Alex snapped back.

Anna's voice came through the radio again. "I saw that! Okay, I know you two have to be there together. This is good. We can start on the next step now. I need the two of you to loop back around to Harden Tower and get the radio transmissions working again." Anna paused for a minute. "Wait, neither of you know how to do that, do you? Well, then, this is going to take longer than I hoped. Oh well. Alex, on the next cycle, I need you to take careful notes of everything about the radio in Harden Tower. Take pictures, too, if you can. I'll bring you back here at the first opportunity, and teach you how to get the radio tower operational again. For now, there are a few things I need you both to lay the groundwork on, that will be instrumental in escapi-"

A deep, ominous chorus of voices interrupted Anna. " _No_ ," they chimed through the radio. The radio exploded in Alex's hand (an oddly familiar action), the air became a heavy sludge, and hundreds of small, triangular holes were torn in the sky. There was a flash of light, and when it dissipated, Clarissa had magically appeared, just like she always seemed to. Nona and Alex had both had extensive encounters with the ghosts already, but there was something different about this time. The atmosphere seemed a little heavier, the crushing pressure on their heads a little tighter, the edges of time and reality itself a little more frayed by the ghosts' presence. Alex shifted in front of Nona, unconsciously putting herself between Clarissa and the orange-clad girl.

"Well, well, well, Alex," hundreds of voices growled from Clarissa's voicebox. "Trying to leave class early, I see. Well, we've got a little something to say about _that_."

"Of course we're trying to leave!" Alex shouted back. "You can't just force us to stay he-"

"Sit... down." The ghosts were no longer just speaking through Clarissa, as they redirected old, lost radio waves. "Much... you... have not... learned. Sleepy time gal." The triangular portals in the sky began to quiver, the air shaking along with them. The earth started shaking next, and, as Alex turned to Nona, trying to leap to her, the ground cracked in between them, the mountain splitting in half under the pressure of supernatural forces. As Alex's portion of the cliff face plummeted toward the ground, she leaped up, trying to grab onto some part of Nona's side of the rock face. Nona reached down to catch her hand, but the two _just_ missed, and Alex plummeted hundreds of feet to the ground below. As she was in free-fall, the ghostly form of Clarissa darted around her, giggling maniacally.

"Start over," she said.

* * *

"It used to be a military base."


End file.
